


Boiling Isles RPG

by Blue_Pyromancer



Category: The Owl House (Cartoon)
Genre: Bullying, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/F, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, RPG AU, angst because I like angst, enemies to lovers sort of, screw the Blight parents, slight slow burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:26:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 30,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26311867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_Pyromancer/pseuds/Blue_Pyromancer
Summary: Amity is just trying to find a way to relieve stress before starting another school year while dealing with her parent's high expectations. Luz has been playing Boiling Isles for years now, previously as a distraction from real life, now as a distraction from real life as well as starting at a new school that will probably have a lot of the same problems as her old one.This is an online RPG au where the main cast will explore the world of The Boiling Isles as well as the human world of teenage problems, characters are slightly aged up as well.
Relationships: Amity Blight/Luz Noceda
Comments: 66
Kudos: 276





	1. Logging In

**Author's Note:**

> This is an online RPG au set in the real world where the main cast of kids all play The Boiling Isles video game. The mechanics of the RPG are pretty much what I know about Dungeons and Dragons without actually opening up my players handbook. Hope you enjoy!

Amity’s POV

Amity stared at the character creation screen on her computer, more specifically she was staring at the many blank boxes that were covering it. This wasn’t going to be as easy as she’d hoped. “Are you sure this is supposed to help with stress relief?” She spoke into her head set. “I don’t even know what half of these words are. What does HP even mean?”

“HP stands for hit points,” she heard Willow’s voice through the headphones. It had taken an embarrassingly long time for Willow to explain to Amity how to use discord voice chats but thankfully they had finally gotten it to work even if her microphone was spotty. “So a lot of this stuff will make sense once you’ve played for a little bit but for now I’m gonna help you set up a character, you can always change it later if you want.”

Amity scrolled over the page again and looked over the time, it was already 10 o’clock and this was definitely going to take a while. She really didn’t deserve this much of Willow’s help but was extremely grateful for it. “Okay so what first?”

“I’d start with your character’s class. It’s like a skillset.”

“What class are you?” Amity asked, hoping for a good idea.

“Oh, I’m a druid, they do plant magic; but for you I was thinking that the regular wizard class would be good, they’re all about accuracy and power, plus my party could really use another character with a magic class.”

“Wizard sounds fine,” Amity said as she filled in the text box, “now what?”

Willow kept guiding Amity through the rest of the page. By the end she’d created a smart looking high elven wizard with green hair and a high intelligence stat. “Now, all that’s left is to create a username and…” Willow yawned “start playing.”

Amity looked at the clock on her desk, damn it was almost midnight already, and of course Willow needed to work in the morning. She could almost picture the girl dozing off in front of her computer. “Hey, you sound tired Willow. I’m pretty sure I can figure it out from here if you want to log off.”

“Hmm?” Willow said, definitely half asleep already. “Oh, yeah that might not be a bad idea. Umm…” There was a pause and the sound of faint tapping from Willow’s keyboard. “Actually, if you’d like, one of my party members is online right now, she’s usually on all night. It’s a good idea to have someone there to show you around when you first start playing but if you’d rather try by yourself-”

“No!” Amity said a bit too quickly before speaking again more softly, “I mean, I think having a guide would be a good idea.” Just making her character was getting her heart rate up, Amity couldn’t imagine being dumped into an open world game alone right now.

“Okay, her username is Lazura34, I’ll send her a message and have her meet you at the big fountain about a block to the right of the tavern you’ll spawn in. Do you have a username I can tell her to look out for?”  
Amity thought for a second before shrugging and placing her fingers on the keyboard. “It’ll be the same as my username on discord.” She said, carefully typing out ‘Witchling’ into the text box.

Luz’s POV

Luz sprinted through the dungeon’s corridor, the torch she was holding offering barely enough light to illuminate her immediate surroundings but at least it was light enough that it didn’t lessen her running speed. The stone golems swiped at her from behind but she was just enough ahead that they couldn’t reach her . A whooshing sound came from behind her and she ducked just in time to avoid taking damage, sure she was at a high enough level that she could probably take these guys but she’d spent the last month looking for this artifact and she needed as much supplies and HP as she could for the rest of this mission.

Finally the cavern opened and it started to get brighter. Luz felt a smile creep onto her face as she got the brass key from her inventory, slammed it into lock on the door at the end of the corridor, and went through right before the mob of rock golems caught her. 

Luz let out a massive sigh of relief and slumped back in her chair as the music shifted out of the battle soundtrack. It had taken her five attempts to get past that last chase sequence and restocking equipment between tries had been a nightmare in and of itself but… Luz’s eyes drifted towards the glowing red and black chest in the middle of the volcano themed cavern on her screen… it will have been worth it. 

Without wasting any more time, Luz approached the chest but right before she was within reach a rumbling sound came through her headphones and the music shifted again. Suddenly a giant rock golem fell from the ceiling, landing with a shock-wave that knocked Luz prone. The rock golem looked very similar to the ones that Luz had just escaped from, only about ten times as big with glowing lava running through the cracks that had been in it’s design. 

She probably could have spent hours staring at the detail that the game developers had placed into this but unfortunately this mission had no save points and the golem was rearing it’s huge, but slow, rock fist to strike at her.

Luz used one of her last few stamina points to spring to her feet and rush behind a pillar right as the golem brought its fist down to where she had been only moments prior. Alright, Luz thought as she drew up her hood, activating her cloak's stealth ability and using the ten second window to get away from where the golem knew to look for her, magma golem, it’s an elemental monster and fire elementals are vulnerable to… Luz smiled as she used her brief moment of cover to pull out her artificer blueprint book and look at the glyphs she had prepared until she found the one she was looking for. Perfect.

She peeked out from behind the column she was hiding behind to try to get a better view of her surroundings before the golem spotted her. There were piles of rubble around her, the floor was bobbing in and out of lava in timed intervals and there were lamps hanging from a few of the columns that were definitely wide enough for her character to perch on. “Oh yeah,” Luz mumbled to herself, “It’s all coming together.”

The golem finally turned so that its back was to her and Luz was about to take the opportunity to make a run for it when suddenly a ringing alert came from her computer.

“Gahh!!!” Luz shouted at the sudden noise and flew backwards out of her chair, sending the mouse flying. There was a gurgling sound from her headphones and Luz got back to eye level with the screen right in time to see the golem heading straight forward. “Damnit!” Luz shouted as she ran from her compromised hiding spot, the golem hot on her tail. With one hand, Luz moved her character, coming dangerously close to running into piles of rubble or falling into lava holes while the other hand scrambled against the carpet trying to find the mouse she’d dropped all while the ringing from her computer was interrupting the game’s audio cues giving her even less time to react to collapsing floors and different strike moves. Finally, she grabbed her mouse and slammed it back on her desk. 

Immediately, Luz slammed herself onto the ground in the middle of her sprint, causing her character to go into a slide and in that split second Luz scrolled her mouse's wheel and right clicked at the perfect time. Then Luz jumped back to her feet and continued sprinting forward as the golem stepped on the glyph she’d ingeniously labeled ‘wind’. The golem flew backwards, not as far as its smaller counterparts would have but it was still knocked prone and Luz used the time it took for the monster to get up to press the hotkey that would pick up the call from discord.

“Hello?” Luz called into her headset, still very much focused on the fight.

“Hey Lazura,” a very familiar yet tired voice responded.

“Oh, hey Salix,” Luz said as she flung a smoke bomb at the golem to distract it while she set up a more complex and time consuming glyph. “Is everything alright because I’m kind of in the middle of something at the moment.”

“Oh sorry to bother you,” Salix yawned, “I just have a friend who’s supposed to start playing tonight and I was hoping you could help them out.”

Luz shot arrows at the golem, as she ran around it, making sure that she was drawing it away from the glyph she’d just planted so that it wouldn’t activate while she was still in the damage radius. “Uh, sure, I’m always happy to help but it’ll have to be in a minute. What’s her username?” She placed two more wind glyphs then fired a splintering arrow to make the golem hesitate just long enough for her to move in a direction that would stop him from activating them as it followed her. Hopefully she could get his HP low enough before activating the trap or else this could get messy.

“Her username is Witchling, I told her to meet you by the fountain in town square.” Salix paused, “You’re not doing the red mountain mission are you?”

Luz tried to laugh innocently into her mike as the magma golem, protector of the red mountain, flung a giant boulder at her. “What me? Solo a mission designed to take a five person party?” She jumped off of a pile of rubble, shooting an arrow at a wind glyph she’d placed below and let the gust shoot her upwards nearly high enough on the column that the golem couldn’t reach. “How did you know?”

“Your profile says you got a new achievement for getting to the heart of the mountain. Lazura, I thought you were going to wait until our weekly meetup.”

“I just didn’t want to bother you guys.” She used her last stamina point to climb out of the golem’s reach but that wasn’t stopping it from lobbing boulders at her while she was trying to climb. “You work all day-”

“So do you.”

“And school for you and Caesar starts in three days. I still think it’s cool you guys go to school together.” She reached the lamppost and climbed on top of it, finally freeing her hands so that she could use her bow again but she had no way of dodging now. This was her only shot.

“Yeah, and you’re starting at a new school in three days.”

“I just didn't want to bother you guys okay?” Luz fired a blasting arrow at the golem causing it to lurch back just enough to activate the last wind glyph she’d planted. “This is an artificer mission meaning you guys won’t benefit from the main loot.” The wind blasted the golem backwards into her final trap, a giant block of ice erupted from the ground fully encasing the golem and freezing it in place. Luz starred as its HP drained lower and lower from the quadruple damage it takes from high level ice attacks until… dammit.

“Come on Lazura, you helped me with the quest for the green thumb gauntlet.”

The tiniest sliver of red gleamed back at her from its health bar. The ice block shook as the golem tried to free itself, it had frozen mid throw animation so the second it released itself it would throw a boulder right where she was standing. She could start climbing down but she’d never make it to the ground and the fall damage alone would be enough to end her if she decided to take the quick way down. No, she only had one option.

“And you helped Caesar get the oracle sphere back when he thought it was worth something.”

Luz scrolled the wheel on her mouse, selecting the last specialty arrow in her arsenal, black garnet tip, double damage. Hopefully it would be enough. The golem had shaken its ice prison twice now, she had seconds before it broke free. Was that enough time?

“My point is, we’re a party and we help each other.”

She notched the arrow and drew it back, using the extra seconds while the golem shook for the third time to get the maximum drawback for maximum damage.  
Hold.

“Lazura, are you still there?”

Now.

Luz released the arrow and watched it sail through the air, reaching the golem right as the ice shattered around it, piercing the creature with perfect timing, perfect precision, perfect everything. She watched as the red in the health bar drained and… no.

The golem stood upright, having taken its damage, Luz couldn’t notch another arrow in time. It lobbed a boulder and on instinct she jumped out of the way. Jumped right off of the lamppost. To the lava hole below.

Luz slammed her head against her keyboard and groaned as her screen went black.

“Lazura, are you still with me?” Salix’s voice was concerned but also very tired.

“Yeah, I’m still here.” Luz finally picked her chair off of the ground and slumped into it as the screen reset to her last save point at the entrance to the red mountain, only this time with practically nothing in her inventory, fifty less gold pieces and one hit point left.

“You died?”

“Yeah.” Luz sighed. “Alright, I’ll go help your friend now, then I’ll spend the rest of the weekend building back up what I lost then we can tackle this mountain together… If that’s alright with you and Caesar.”

“That’s more than alright, and thank you for helping with my friend. Just please be careful with her, she’s a little high strung and this is supposed to be a stress relief thing for her.”

“You got it. Now go get some sleep.”

Another yawn came from Salix’s mike. “Okay, talk to you after work tomorrow. Goodnight.”

Salix logged off and Luz smiled softly at how cute her friend sounded when she was tired. Maybe she could try to meet them in real life soon. No, Luz shook that thought from her head immediately, she didn’t need more people to disappoint.

Sighing, Luz trudged toward the nearest warp stone located a few minutes away and opened up her map. She clicked on town square and closed her eyes as her character was teleported to the center of The Boiling Isles.


	2. No Crawl Like a Dungeon Crawl

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for all of the kind responses. I hope you enjoy this chapter just as much!

Amity’s POV

What was taking this girl so long? Amity thought as she drummed her fingers against her desk. She’d been dutifully waiting by the fountain as Willow had instructed but so far no one had approached her except some goblin that was selling something. 

Amity glanced at the alarm clock on her desk, it was just past midnight, maybe she should just go to sleep and try again in the morning, that is if her parents would let her do anything besides get a head start on her classwork. Amity groaned, school hadn’t even started yet and it already felt like she was downing. She checked the clock again and shook her head. Enough was enough, she was about to log out when a figure in a hood came up and approached her. 

Words appeared in a text bubble above the figure’s head. Lazura34: Hi! Are you Witchling?

Amity blinked, Lazura34, that was the person Willow told her to meet right? The girl’s avatar looked interesting enough, a dark blue cloak with a hood, short dark hair, brown eyes, and ears that were almost as pointy as Amity’s character’s. She had a bow and quiver over her shoulder and a satchel at her side, it didn’t look like she had a lot of armor on especially compared to others she’d seen walking around but the brown breastplate she wore had an intricate pattern on it that seemed to indicate it was for a more experienced player. Amity typed back, Witchling: Yeah, that’s me I guess, it’s nice of you to show up. Amity bit her cheek the second she pressed enter, that was probably a rude thing to say but she’d been waiting for a while. 

The girl responded almost immediately, Lazura34: Yeah, sorry about that, I was in the middle of a mission when Salix called me over discord. Oh! What’s your username on discord so we can actually talk instead of typing back and forth?

Amity hesitated, not really sure if it was a good idea to give that information to someone she just met but remembered that she hadn’t put any real information into the account anyway. She decided that the risk was minimal and gave the girl her information then a second later got a ping from the other window and accepted the friend request. “Is this working?” She asked into her microphone as a test.

“Woah, what’s up with your mike? It sounds kind of weird.” This was really the first thing she had to say to her, no hello or anything?

“Yeah, it’s a little old.” Amity responded, her tone clipped.

“Well, at least it works.” Lazura said, seemingly oblivious to Amity’s annoyance. ‘It’s nice to meet you, I’m Lazura but you already knew that. So Salix says that this is your first time playing.”

Salix? Amity thought before remembering that that was Willow’s username. She’d mentioned at some point that she and Augustus didn’t like using her real names ingame and that it was more common to go by the username. “Yeah, she said you could help me get started. I, uh, don’t really know what I’m doing yet.”

“That’s no problem!” Lazura said cheerfully over her mike. “It looks like Salix already sent you a party invite so if you accept it I can help you get some basic armor and a wand to start you out.”

Amity glanced over the screen until she spotted a scroll labeled ‘Notifications’ with a 1 printed on it. She accepted the invitation and the slot on the taskbar labeled ‘Party’ lit up. “Uh, I think i got it.” Amity said clicking on the slot and scrolling through, it showed not only her three new party members but their basic stats as well. She recognised Salix400 as Willow, the fairy druid had glasses and dark hair just like her. Then there was Ca3sarsGh0st who was definitely Augustus; it said he was a goblin paladin, whatever that was. Finally, there was Lazura, a half elf with, what was that, ranger-artificer, as her class. “What’s an artificer?” Amity asked. “I don’t think I saw that when I was making my character.”

“Oh, that’s my multiclass, artificers are basically the people who create magical weapons.” Lazura started explaining. “After you play for long enough and start to establish your interests more, sometimes the game will give you prompts for certain side quests that you can do to add a nontraditional class on top of what you already are.”

“And how long have you been playing?”

“I’ve been playing for a few hours a day for a couple years now.” Lazura said as if it was the most normal thing in the world for someone to spend hours in a virtual world with no real world benefit to anything. “So, onto shopping!”

Lazura lead Amity around the main area to a few different shops and a few different food stands. Apparently she was low on health from a failed mission or something but Amity didn’t really understand a lot of what she was saying. To her credit though, Lazura definitely knew what she was talking about, going on about weight to speed ratios and damage percentiles at a rate that made Amity’s head spin despite all of the advanced math courses she’d taken. Honestly, it was kind of nice to listen to her talk, she had a nice voice and was clearly passionate about everything, plus she didn’t talk down to her when she asked a question which is something that her family was prone to doing. 

“Hey, Lazura,” Amity spoke up after a lecture about the magical advantages of different types of wood in the wand shop. “I saw some wizard looking guys with staphs, where can I get one of those.”

“Oh don’t worry we’ll get you a staph eventually.” Lazura stepped back and faced Amity’s avatar. “Staphs actually can’t be bought in shops, they’re earned after certain missions that you probably won’t be able to complete for a little while. Besides, you should probably get a feel for a few different kinds of wood first so that you can figure out what kind of magic you prefer, that way we can go on a mission for the kind of staph that would work best for you.”

Amity nodded before remembering that Lazura couldn’t see her. “Okay, so what’s a good wand to start with?” She listened as Lazura showed her the pine wand that was apparently the best one for basic magic of all kinds and after the ranger helped her pick out a basic spell book they were off to her first dungeon.

Amity and Lazura walked side by side through the grey stone hallways. The maze was lit by some green lamps hanging every few feet and there was spooky background music that Lazura had been keen to point out. Amity was flipping through her spell book per Lazura’s instructions as the girl gave a crash course on magic. “So, you have to make sure that you’ve got your spell book equipped or else it doesn’t work, and keep an eye on your mana because more powerful spells take up more of it and the dagger you’ve got won’t help you out all that much if it comes down to it.”

“Okay, I think I’ve got it.” Amity put the spell book away and noticed some scratches on the wall. “Lazura, are those claw marks?” She suddenly felt her heart rate increase, Lazura had told her this was a monster dungeon but she didn’t think they would come up so soon. She was unprepared, her palms started to sweat making the mouse slippery. She wasn’t ready for this.

“Yeah!” Lazura responded, cheerful as ever. “You see how they’re white against the stone walls? That’s how the game developers let us know that we’re going the right way. The first cave spider spawn is actually right around the next corner. I was gonna point that out in a second but you beat me to it, you’ve got a good eye Witchling!”

“Uh, thanks.” Amity’s worry faded slightly as she felt her face heat up. She doubted she could count on more than one hand the number of times she remembered being complimented. It felt… nice. 

Lazura must have noticed a change in her voice because she stopped walking and faced Amity. “Hey, you don’t need to worry about anything, I know this dungeon like the back of my hand. The main goal here is for you to learn how to cast spells and earn some XP, I’ll keep all of the monsters occupied, all you’ll need to worry about is hitting them.” Amity could almost picture the smile the girl must have had on her face. “So, you ready?”

Amity smiled, feeling better about herself than she’d felt in a while. “Yeah, let’s do it.”

Amity completely lost track of time, firing off the spells that Lazura suggested albeit slowly, while the ranger kept the spiders’ attention on her. “What should I do next?” She called out, her mana was getting low but she should have enough for a few more spells.

“Try ice knife, it’s low level but does damage to anything next to it even on a miss.” Lazura stabbed one of the three spiders that were chasing her, doing just enough damage to keep it occupied on her without taking away Amity’s kill, then expertly dodged its attack before sprinting several spaces away. She was giving Amity enough time to ready the spell, as unpracticed and slow as she was. She’d messed up a few times and had missed a few more, then the second her mouse finished tracing the symbol on her screen, her avatar drew a circle of blue energy in the air and was now just waiting for Amity to press the button. Lazura jumped, “Now!” she shouted and Amity fired.

The ice blue spell erupted from the spell circle and Amity watched as it seemed to shatter against the center spider, sending shards out to the two smaller spiders behind it. All three immediately keeled over, having taken plenty of damage from her at this point along with this being a ‘newbie dungeon’ as Lazura had called it. “Yes!” Amity shouted before remembering that there were other people in the house.

“Witchling, that was awesome!” Lazura seemed to have no such quarrel about the volume of her voice.

“Thanks,” Amity grinned as she collected the spider silk and the single fang that had appeared as the spider carcasses faded. “So which way next?” 

“Okay, so two turns from here, there’s a cave with a few bats, they’re small but fast and…” Lazura’s voice faded out like she’d gotten distracted. 

“Lazura?” Amity called over her mike, “you still there?”

“Actually Witchling, I’m really sorry but I have to go now. You have my discord so you can message me through that if you have any questions.”

Amity blinked at the suddenness of this, she wasn’t ready to stop yet but she also didn’t want to keep going without Lazura there. “Uh, okay,” she was unsure of what else to say. “I guess I’ll see you around then.”

“See you soon!” Lazura said and with that, her avatar vanished from the game. 

The green haired girl sighed, disappointed that the night was over already. “Wait,” she said, confusion in her voice. “How do I get out of here?”

“Oh, since you’re out of combat you can just hit the map and it’ll teleport you to right outside the dungeon.” Amity almost screamed as Lazura’s voice came over her headphones until she remembered that they were talking over discord and not the game. “Or if you want to leave the game completely you can just hit the exit button in settings, it’s the gear in the upper right.”

“Oh, okay, thank you.” Amity said, her voice faint from the slight shock.

“No problem! Goodnight!” There was an audible blip as Lazura left the voice chat and Amity exited the game, slowly closing the lid of her laptop and letting the dim glow from her alarm clock consume her as the only source of light. “Oh crap,” Amity muttered looking at the clock. When did it get to be 3:00am?

Luz’s POV

Witchling seemed really nice, Luz thought as she closed her laptop carefully. She hoped they’d be able to play again before school started and everything inevitably went to hell. She stood up from her chair and stretched before making her way into the kitchen as the rumble of the engine in the driveway died out. A small smile on her face, Luze went about her normal routine of grabbing the meal she’d cooked the previous afternoon and preparing it for the microwave. Tonight it was enchiladas and for once they weren’t even a little burnt. 

The dull whirring of the microwave was overtaken by the sound of a key turning. “You’re home early.” Luz grinned as her mother walked into the house and grabbed some silverware for the two of them.

Camilia chuckled as she set her bag down and returned Luz’s smile. “More like I’m just a little less late than usual.” She walked over to Luz anda gave the girl a kiss on the forehead before easing into her seat at the kitchen table. Luz got the plates from the microwave and set them down in front of her and her mom. “Gracias mija, this smells wonderful,” she said before they started eating.

This had pretty much been their routine since they’d moved here at the start of summer. Luz knew that the night shift hadn’t been easy on her mom at the hospital; she went in early, came back late, never took a day off, and came home practically dead on her feet. Cooking dinner was the least Luz could do and she knew her mom appreciated having one less thing to worry about.

They exchanged small talk for a while as they ate, Luz asked her mom about work and vice versa. 

“Eda’s fine,” Luz responded, “but King tried to fight the raccoon again and ended up getting covered in trash.” She laughed at the memory.

Camilia smiled, then looked down at her plate. “And how are you feeling about school, it starts up in, what, two days now?”

Luz froze at the question, the food in her mouth seemed to lose its flavor as she swallowed. “Uh, yeah, I guess I’m ready. Ready as I’ll ever be, right?” She shoved a forkful of enchilada in her mouth and smiled, hoping her mom would leave it at that. If only she were that lucky.

Her mom placed her fork down on the plate. “Carino,” she placed her hand against Luz’s cheek, stroking the hairline with her thumb. “I know that you had some problems with people at your last school…” 

Understatement of the century. Luz thought to herself but kept her smile pasted on.

“But this is a fresh start. A new chance to make friends and start looking into college. You’re still looking for schools with game design programs right? Who knows, you may even like it here.”

Luz took her mom’s hand in her own. “I do like it here mom. Eda’s a really awesome boss and I like working for her. And as for school...” She squeezed her mom’s hand and gave her a reassuring smile. “I’m gonna be okay Mama, I promise.”

Camilia squeezed her daughter’s hand back, she looked very relieved to hear that last part. “Thank you mija. Now, it’s late and you have work in the morning. Go to bed.”

“Okay, I’ll just take care of the dishes-”

“I’ve got them, go to bed.” 

Luz knew better than to disobey that order. She smiled softly at her mother before getting up from the table and placing the plate in the sink. “Buenos noches, Mama,” she said as she gave her mom a kiss goodnight and walked off to her room. School started in two days, she really hoped it wouldn’t make her a liar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So we end this chapter with a little look into Luz's home life, sorry about my Spanish I almost failed it in middle school and I can't figure out how to get accents over some of the letters. Anyway I hope you all enjoyed, please comment below, I survive solely off of your feedback.


	3. The First Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of course it rains on the first day of school.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for bullying, nothing major yet but still.

Luz’s POV

It was still dark outside when Luz’s alarm clock assaulted her ears. She’d never been one to wake up early by any means and the storm clouds outside that made the world darker only reassured her that it was way too freaking early to be up.

Luz groaned as she dragged herself out from beneath her covers and started getting ready for school, throwing on a dark blue sweatshirt and tossing her notebooks and laptop into a backpack. She made her breakfast as quietly as possible to avoid waking up her mom; as usual Luz had waited up for her last night but at least the nurse didn’t need to be up for a few more hours and Luz would be damned if she interrupted her before then. 

After choking down a bowl of cereal, Luz grabbed her bike from the garage and faced the storm in front of her. Rain was coming down in sheets, making it so that the street was barely visible even with the street lights still shining down. For a good minute she just stood there, trying to build up the willpower to actually step outside. She could just ditch today all together and go back to bed, the first day was all introductions anyway so it’s not like she’d miss anything important. But on the other hand, if she did that her mom would definitely give her that ‘not mad just disappointed look’ and Luz hated the idea of that a lot more than she hated the idea of school.

Luz sighed and started pedaling, hoping that the plastic bag she’d wrapped around her backpack would be enough to keep the water out.

Amity’s POV

“How can water not be wet?”

“It has the ability to make things wet but water in and of itself can’t be wet.”

Amity stared out the window as her siblings bickered from the front seat of the car. She couldn’t even remember which argument belonged which twin, not that it mattered. She was a bit more focused on the raindrops racing each other down the window and going over which teachers she’d been instructed to talk to about extra credit in her head, but soon enough her mind drifted back to The Boiling Isles. Over the last few days she’d played a few more times, meeting Salix400 and Ca3sarsGh0st in game for the first time and thankfully Gus was okay with her joining the party despite their... complicated history.

Both times, Lazura had come online at around 8:00pm and even though Amity could tell from their first session that she was really good at the game, seeing her compared to Willow and Gus only confirmed it. She had a completely different play style than them, running and jumping around enemies in perfect time with their attacks, setting traps that were aimed exactly for weaknesses and seeming to never get hit herself. She didn’t do a lot of damage with her arrows but she knew how to keep the enemies’ attention so that Amity, Willow, and Gus had openings to hit, or to lead them into the traps that she set with her glyphs, as she called them, and that always did a lot of damage.

Amity smiled as she thought about Lazura and the way she joked about everything and answered all of Amity’s questions, even the more stupid ones, with sincerity. She looked forward to playing with the ranger more tonight after she finished her homework. Hopefully the girl would be online by then, apparently it was her first day of school as well.

A sudden flash of lightning interrupted her thought process and made her notice that they were pulling into the school’s parking lot. 

“Alright, Mittens,” Emira said as Amity grabbed her bag from the floor of the car. “Our last class lets out at 4:00 so we’ll be back to pick you up after that.

“Just be careful not to get too much liquid that is apparently not wet on you before getting inside.” Edric said with a pointed look at Emira.

Amity decided to leave her siblings - who had somehow managed to progress to their second year of college - at that and ran from the car to the entrance of the school. It was downpouring and despite Amity’s best efforts her purple blouse still got doused. She checked the time on her phone, she still had a few more minutes until the first bell, maybe she could dry off in the bathroom really quickly.

Her first class of the day was honors precalculus with Mr. Bump and by the time she got to it her shirt was still a little darker in color than normal but thankfully she’d managed to get rid of most of the water with some paper towels. She’d just managed to squeeze into her seat next to Boscha, who was sipping on an iced coffee from a pretty expensive chain shop, when the bell finally rang. Amity and Boscha were sitting in the back row like usual, Boscha always liked it there because it made it easier for the teachers to ignore it when the star, now captain, of the girls soccer team wanted to talk and pass notes. Of course, Boscha’s seat also had the bonus of being directly behind Willow’s with only one empty desk separating them. 

“How’d that loser even get into this class?” Boscha snickered leaning in closer to Amity even though she’d definitely said it loud enough for the black haired girl to hear. Amity saw Willow’s shoulders slump ever so slightly, they hadn’t looked at each other as Amity had walked into class as both of them agreed that it would be better to just avoid each other in public. There was, however, one more part to that agreement.

As Boscha started to discreetly load up a spitball to fire in Willow’s direction, Amity reached out a hand and gently lowered the straw. “Hey, just leave Willow alone okay?” 

Boscha gave Amity a look of disbelief, “What? Why?”

“Just do it.” Amity wasn’t looking at her, just staring at the board as Bump went over expectations for the course. Amity knew that Boscha knew the tone she was using and that she also knew not to question it. Boscha gave her one last look of confusion and disappointment before jamming the straw into her pocket and slumping back into her chair with her arms crossed.

About ten minutes into class the door opens and all eyes are drawn to the kid walking through the front of the classroom with her clothes completely soaked with water. Amity had never seen this girl before so she was definitely new. She was wearing jeans, a blue sweatshirt with the hood drawn up and a pair of purple converse sneakers, one of which appeared to be held together with duct tape and a dream. Her skin was dark and slick from rainwater and her brown eyes had a look that said she’d rather be anywhere else. The girl left puddles where her feet touched the ground as she trudged over to Mr. Bump, holding out a pink late slip for him to take.

“I do hope you don’t make a habit of coming into my classroom late, Ms… Noceda.” He said glancing over the paper. “There’s a bit of leeway because it’s the first day but for the most part, tarties are not well tolerated here at Hexside. You may take a seat now...” he looked down at the paper again, “Luz.”

“I’ll try not to make a habit of it.” The girl, Luz, mumbled as she made her way to the one open desk left, the one right in front of Boscha. There was a squishing sound as Luz sat in her soaked clothes and she looked like she would give anything for the floor to open up and swallow her whole. Boscha stifled her laughter very poorly as water dripped from the seat in front of her.

“Ms. Noceda,” Bump called from the front of the room. “Hats and hoods are also not well tolerated at Hexside.” 

“Sorry,” Luz sighed as she pulled her hood down revealing equally drenched short brown hair that looked like it had been cut in front of her bathroom mirror. Unfortunately for her, as her hood came down, a small trickle of water spilled out onto Boscha’s desk behind her.

The dyed red-head immediately glared daggers at the oblivious new girl girl and tapped on her shoulder hard enough to make her flinch. “Hey,” Boscha hissed through gritted teeth, “You ruined my notes.” 

Luz looked down at the paper on the Boscha’s desk. Amity could have pointed out that the paper was blank anyway but she’d already bothered Boscha enough with asking her to leave Willow alone. She didn’t want to push her too far and just watched as Luz grabbed a notebook from her somehow not soaked backpack and tore a new piece of paper for Boscha before turning back around in her seat.

Amity could have stopped what happened next. She could have told Boscha off. She could have warned Luz. Hell she could have just shot Boscha a look and the girl would have halted in her tracks. But she didn’t. Instead Amity stared straight ahead as Boscha took her iced coffee, removed the lid, and dumped it down the neck of the girl in front of her. 

Luz sucked in through her teeth, stiffening at the temperature change as fresh freezing liquid seeped down her back. 

“What’s going on back there?” Mr. Bump called out, his attention drawn to the noise.

“Oh, I just spilled my drink by accident.” Boscha said, leaning closer to the girl in front of her with a sickly sweet smile on her face. “It shouldn’t happen again.”

Amity watched out of the corner of her eye as the new girl clamped her fists in her lap, her arms shaking from the strain. Her jaw was clenched, eyes squeezed shut, and Amity hoped that, for her sake, she had the insight not to say anything. Luz continued to hold that position after Bump accepted Boscha’s explanation and moved on. For a solid few seconds Luz was as still as a statue, then, slowly she let out the breath she had been holding and relaxed her muscles.

Smart girl, Amity thought, refocusing her attention to the front of the room. However as her eyes shifted over she made eye contact with Willow who gave her a pointed look, glancing her eyes ever so slightly in Luz’s direction expectantly. 

Amity just shrugged. She’d stopped Boscha from picking on Willow, what more did she want from her? She wasn’t Boscha’s keeper so it wasn’t really any of her business what the girl did. Besides, even if she did step in, Boscha would just find someone else to bother, at least this way it was just some random new girl that no one cared about.

Willow shook her head as she turned back towards Mr. Bump. Amity had a feeling she was going to hear more about this later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not the meet cute you were hoping for huh? Seriously though, I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter, please leave a comment if you have any thoughts or questions, I live for your feedback!


	4. The Rest of the First Day (for Luz at least)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The rest of Luz's first day of school.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for bullying.
> 
> There's going to be a bit of angst in this one but you guys were expecting that going into this story. There's some funny stuff too so don't worry too much!

Chapter 4

Luz’s POV

The rest of the day carried on pretty much the same as the morning had. Luz didn’t know why she even entertained the idea that this school would be any different. It was as though jerks were innately drawn to her, like they could smell the fact that she wouldn’t stand up for herself. 

The last time she’d tried that had been years ago when she’d finally snapped and pushed the person who had been picking on her for months. The school’s stupid no tolerance policy had landed her with a suspension and the principal had required that their parents come to pick them up to discuss what had happened. That wasn’t a problem for the other girl’s stay at home mom who Luz could hear screaming about “Getting that brat deported!” from the other room; but it had taken Luz’s mom until two hours after school had ended just to get to her phone. She’d been assisting with a surgery and of course didn’t have her phone on her. It was dark by the time they got home and even though Camilia believed her when Luz said that she’d only been defending herself, the other girl and her mom had barely let her get two words in and the principal hadn’t cared enough to tell them to stop screaming. 

Later that night, long after Luz was supposed to be asleep, she heard sniffling coming from her mother’s room. That was the first time she’d ever heard her mother cry and Luz was determined to make sure that it was the last, so she kept her head down, kept her grades up, and never said anything about what a mess her life was. Her mother had enough to worry about.

That’s why she kept her mouth shut when Boscha dumped her coffee down the back of her neck, and when she slid her lunch onto the floor, and when she tripped her in the hallway and stepped on her papers as she tried to pick them up. At least by the end of the day her hoodie had dried out, right in time for her to go back into the rain so she could bike to work. 

Luz gazed out into the pouring rain on the other side of the glass door. The rest of the school had already loaded up onto the buses and Luz had done her best to avoid the crowd. It was a twenty minute bike ride to Eda’s shop, she just had to actually step out into the rain long enough to get there. 

“Waiting for someone to pick you up?” A voice piped up from behind her. Luz glanced back and saw a girl with green hair setting up in one of the comfier chairs meant for waiting parents, the girl pulled out a textbook and looked like she was about to start homework even though they barely had any today. She recognised the girl from earlier in the day, she’d looked at Luz a little funny in precalculus this morning and, more prevalently she had also been following Boscha around all day, only rolling her eyes whenever the red head did anything. 

So why was she talking to Luz?

“No,” Luz said, trying not to let her uneasiness show. “Just building up my nerves” she nodded towards the storm outside. “What about you?”

The girl shrugged, not really looking at Luz. “My siblings are going to pick me up in about an hour.”

Luz nodded, choosing not to continue the awkward conversation, she started pushing against the door. There was sound from behind her and she turned to see the green haired girl looking like she wanted to say something. “Yeah?”

She opened her mouth to say something and then seemed to think better of it, just shaking her head and turning back to her work.

“Okay then.” Luz, mumbled before bracing herself and heading out into the rain.

It took Luz ten minutes to get downtown where The Owl House was set up. She locked her bike to its usual pipe in the alley before trudging through the front door to the vacant pawn shop.

“Eda?” Luz called out upon seeing the empty main floor.

“You’re five hours late!” Luz smiled as the older woman stumbled out from behind the ‘staff only’ door, her arms full of junk with King rushing out from between her legs to jump into Luz’s arms. “Also you’re soaking wet.”

“Oh really? I hadn’t noticed.” Luz smirked as she scratched King behind his pointy white ears, the dog… cat… whatever he was didn’t seem to mind the water. “Also I told you I started school today.”

“Ah school shmool, I never finished school and look at me!” Eda stated pointing a thumb to herself as a dusty, glass Christmas ornament rolled off of the counter and shattered against the floor. “Now go upstairs and dry off, I don’t need you getting all my stuff wet.”

Luz smiled as the owl lady, as Eda liked to call herself, tossed her a change of clothes from a rack behind her and all but shoved her through into the employee only door. Though Eda had the rest of the building registered as storage space, it was pretty clear that she had converted the place into her home. By this point Luz knew the layout of the house pretty well, she placed her backpack by the seat at the kitchen table where she usually worked and went up the stairs to the bathroom where she finally hung her sopping wet clothes over the shower curtain, and changed into the ones Eda had thrown at her. 

“How ya feeling?” Eda asked, hearing the door open as Luz stepped back into the main floor.

“Professional.” Luz replied with a laugh as she went over to Eda while sporting the Hello Kitty pajama pants and 80s band t-shirt that read ‘BAD GIRL COVEN. “And a lot better, thank you.”

“Yeah, can you believe I got those for two bucks each?” Eda cackled as she grabbed an old video camera that appeared to be new to the collection and shoved it into Luz’s arms, “I don’t even know what a coven is but I want to be a part of the bad girl one!”

Luz laughed along with her employer as she started turning the camera over in her hands, “So do you want me to take a look at this?” 

“Yeah, a guy dropped it off for ten bucks, said it wasn’t working. Usually I have a consultant I can go to to see if it’s worth the time or effort to fix, but for some reason they decided to go to school!”

Luz gave the camera a quick once over, it was a mini vhs recorder that still appeared to be in decent condition, maybe a little water damaged. “I’ll do some research on this, then just go through my normal routine about fixing it.” Eda shot her a thumbs up which Luz enthusiastically reciprocated before heading back through the employee only door and plopping herself down at her usual seat at the kitchen table. There were a few other works in progress scattered in boxes around the floor, a few old game consoles that were damaged and waiting for parts to show up in the mail or other pieces of various technology that Luz had said she could take a look at and would probably be able to sell for a prophet. 

After sticking her headphones on, Luz started up a video on her computer about game design because they weren’t learning anything in class yet that she would need extra time going over. Then she went to work, researching the type of camera and the brand, the usual resale value and so on, she found the kinds of batteries it used in the back of Eda’s battery drawer and managed to turn it on, though judging by the fact the fact that the screen was still dark despite the red light being on, she’d have to guess that she was correct about the internal damage. 

She spent the next three hours doing research on the inner workings of this brand of camera and taking it apart and looking at what was inside. There was definitely a bit of water damage but nothing too serious, a few frayed wires that wouldn’t be hard to replace. Luz could probably have it fixed up by the next afternoon. She also made a point to mention to Eda that it probably wasn’t worth the hours she was putting into it monetary wise, not that Eda cared, the woman could sell hair gel to a bald man at a fifty dollar upcharge. And actually has. 

The store closed at seven as per usual and Luz rode her bike back home. Thankfully by that time the storm had slowed to a drizzle so she didn’t get hopelessly wet on her way back to the house.

She grabbed the mail on her way in, throwing out the junk then placing the coupons in one pile on the kitchen table and the bills on the other. Luz sighed at the latter pile that was slowly growing just like it did every week with letters from the usual debt collectors as well as from the electric and water companies. Her paycheck always came at the end of the week, this’ll be the last one with the hours for working full time, hopefully they’d still be able to stay on top of everything with her only working part time.

Choosing to shove those thoughts to the back of her head, Luz opened the fridge to look for something to cook for dinner. She knew that they’d been running out of general foodstuffs, the empanadas from the other day had taken up a lot of the spare ingredients and there were still some left over but Luz tried to make it a point for there to be some options in the house. She grabbed a box of spaghetti and the rest of a bag of frozen meatballs and thankfully had them cooked and in the fridge in a timely manner. 

After cleaning herself up, Luz booted up her laptop and immediately felt a sense of relief wash over her as she signed into the already active voice chat on discord.

“Hey guys!” Her voice sounded brighter than it had all day. “What’s going on?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout out to the awesome commenters, WaterDragonMaverick and AdamGoodtime, that pointed out that I had spelled Boscha wrong in the last chapter, I went ahead and fixed that but thank you so much for pointing that out to me. Feel free to leave a kudos or a comment, I love hearing your thoughts on what's going on!


	5. The Rest of the First Day (for Amity)

Amity’s POV

Amity sat stiffly at the dinner table, the only sound was that of silverware scraping against the plates as her family ate dinner. By the time Emira and Edric had picked Amity up, she’d already finished her homework so she was able to relax in her room until the inevitable dinner conversation, or interrogation as it felt like. Her parents always started the night by having their children eat in silence as they were not allowed to speak unless spoken to, even the twins as, even though they were adults, they still lived under their parents’ roof while in college.

“Edric, I trust that you contacted your economics professor about the grade on your last paper.” Amity gripped her fork a little tighter at the sound of her mother’s voice, but was careful not to show any noticeable variations in her facial expression.

“Yes mother, I did.” Edric stated, his voice wavered slightly. The Blight children had learned a long time ago how to hide their tells, unfortunately these dinner table interrogations had a way of tearing those walls down and leaving them vulnerable. 

Their mother didn’t look up from her meal. “And?” There was an edge in her voice and Amity could see Edric stiffen out of the corner of her eye.

He swallowed even though he hadn’t taken a bite of anything. “Unfortunately, my professor refused to allow me to make a revision since my grade was higher than the vast majority of the-”

Their mother placed her fork down, signalling an order for silence. She brought her eyes to meet his, her expression practically made of ice. “We do not care how the rest of the class performed. We care about how you performed, and for a Blight that grade was unacceptable.” She looked back at her food. “Since you cannot revise this paper you will speak to your professor about how you can do better on the next one. Emira,” Amity’s sister snapped to attention, “you will assist him with his future assignments. Ensure that this does not happen again.”

“Yes Mother.” Emira gave a short nod, glancing over to her brother who was trying hard not to shake in his seat. 

“Very well then, you are excused.” The twins grabbed their half-eaten dinners and left the room as quickly as they could without inciting more chastisement for being rude. 

Amity gathered her plate as well. She hadn’t finished either but her appetite had dissipated the second her mother opened her mouth.

“Amity,” her mother’s voice froze her in place.

“Yes mother?” Her heartbeat spiked but she was careful not to show it. She was better at this game than her siblings were, not that it mattered, her mother could see right through her anyway. Her mind was buzzing with all of the things her mother could bring up, all of the minor infractions that kept her up at night whether it was possible for her mother to know about them or not. It was only the first day of school, she didn’t have any real assignments yet, her homework was done. Had she discovered that Amity was talking to Willow again?

“Did you speak to your teachers about opportunities for extra credit as I instructed you?”

The blood drained from Amity’s face. She was going to do that the second that class was over but when that Luz Noceda girl had interrupted the class the extra credit just slipped her mind. On the one hand, she was relieved that her mother didn’t know about Willow, on the other hand, she still had to tell her mother that she had failed the task that she did know about. 

Amity was hesitating for too long. She could lie, say she spoke to her teachers and then actually do it tomorrow… No. Her mother would see right through her like she always did. Amity’s tongue felt like lead. She only had one real option. “I apologise, Mother, but it must have slipped my mind. I will be sure to do that tomorrow.”

It was only a second before her mother spoke again but it felt like an eternity. “Amity, a Blight does not forget such things. I expect you to perform to the best of your ability and so far you have failed in that. Do you really expect to get into Harvard or Yale or Princeton if these things just slip your mind?”

“No, Mother.” Amity fought to keep her voice steady. “I will speak to my teachers tomorrow.”

“Yes, you will.” Her mother went back to her meal. “You are dismissed.”

Amity grabbed her plate and rushed out the room as her mother and father continued to eat in silence. Her father hadn’t looked up from the newspaper for the entire conversation.

After putting her dishes away, Amity went back to her room. On her way she passed Edric’s and heard Emira comforting him as he muttered about how an eighty-seven was fine if the rest of the class failed. Her heart was racing and she just wanted to lock her door and shut the rest of the world out. Why couldn’t she have just remembered to talk to her teachers? Why did Luz Noceda have to show up and distract her?

She groaned and checked her watch. It was going to be a while until Lazura usually got online. Sure she liked playing with Willow and Augustus but Lazura was different. Amity didn’t feel like she had to justify herself to her like she had to with the other two. Logically she knew that they were on reasonable terms now, if they weren’t then they wouldn’t have let her stay in the game, but Amity knew that she was on thin ice with everyone around her. If Willow or Augustus decided that she wasn’t worth it they could kick her out of the adventuring party, if Boscha got wise about why Amity was blocking her from bullying them her social life would go down the drain, and if her parents found out about her hanging out with Willow again even if it was just online… Amity shuttered. She didn’t want to think about that.

Lazura was the only person she didn’t feel like she had to walk on eggshells around. With everyone else it was like Amity had to justify her existence, but Lazura just welcomed her with open arms and a voucher from Willow. Amity didn’t need to know everything because Lazura was happy to explain. She didn’t need to be perfect every time because ‘mistakes are part of being human’. She didn’t need to fake a smile or a laugh at a dumb joke because everything about being with Lazura just naturally put her at ease. Her laugh, her exaggerated reactions, even the way she talked about the virtual world, analyzing every little detail and design choice as though she’d been born there. Amity could listen to her talk for hours but after logging onto discord it was clear that she wasn’t online yet but Caesar and Salix were.

She entered the voice chat and heard Augustus and Willow talking to each other. It sounded like they were working through a dungeon while having a separate conversation. Amity was about to announce her presence when she heard what Willow was talking about. 

“I mean, I don’t know what I was expecting her to do, but I hoped she would have at least tried to talk Boscha down again.” Willow sounded upset. “She just sat there while Boscha dumped that drink all over her and didn’t say anything-” 

“Hey guys.” Amity interrupted Willow’s rant. 

Augustus squeaked into his mike before regaining his composure. “Oh, hey Witchling, sorry we’re in the middle of a dungeon right now. It was taking a while for you to get on so we just went ahead and-”

“I heard what you guys were talking about.” Amity had to choose her words carefully, she didn’t want to lie to them but she had to find a way to defend herself without them kicking her out of the party. 

“You could have at least said something to her.” Willow's voice came over Amity’s headset. She didn’t bother with greetings, just getting right to the point.

Amity sighed, “I already talked to her when I told her to stop bothering you.”

“You know what I mean.” Willow didn’t sound angry, just disappointed which was somehow worse. “You just let her bully Luz, it was her first day, she didn’t know what she was getting into.”

“Well maybe she should have been more careful.” Amity knew the second the words left her mouth that that wasn’t the right thing to say. The conversation with her parents had drained her energy making it harder to choose her words, she needed to try a different route. “Look, I talked to Luz later and gave her some advice on how to deal with Boscha.”

“What kind of advice?” Augustus asked.

Shoot. This was going to sound bad. “I told her to just ignore her and maybe Boscha would get bored.”

“Oh come on, you know that won’t work. If it did you wouldn’t have had to talk to Boscha in the first place.” Now Willow sounded upset.

“Look, it’s not my job to hold Luz’s hand and tell her what to do. If I had given her real advice it would have been to cut her losses and go to another school but that’s probably not going to happen so instead I told her to do the thing that would cause the least complications.” Amity knew they wouldn’t like what she was saying but at least it was the truth. “At least this way, it won’t be as bad, Bosha’s behavior won’t get that much worse unless she gets a real reaction and hopefully it’ll be awhile until Luz gives her one.” She could feel Willow about to say something but after the talk she’d had with her parents at dinner Amity really didn’t have enough energy left in her to continue.  
“Guys,” her voice was a lot softer now. “Can we please not talk about this right now? I’ve… had a long day and…” she sighed, knowing that the exhaustion was showing in her voice. It was uncomfortable for her to show this kind of weakness and she would help it if she could, but at this point she was just done. “Can we please just keep this and school separate? I really don’t think I can-”

“Hey guys!” Lazura’s voice rang out over their headsets. Amity stiffened as the ranger’s cheerful tone cut through the tension like a knife, leaving only an awkward silence behind. “What’s going on?”

The voice chat was silent. Amity waited, desperately hoping that Willow wouldn’t tell her. She knew it was being a hypocrite but she didn’t want Lazura to know about what she was like outside of this game. She didn’t like that person, she didn’t like the friends she had outside of The Boiling Isles, she didn’t like the way she was expected to walk with her nose in the air and talk without emotion. 

But... she liked it here. She liked fighting spiders in dungeons and drinking ale made of ones and zeros in a virtual bar. She liked talking to Willow and Augustus without worrying what would happen if her parents found out, even if she still needed to watch what she was saying around them. And... she liked Lazura. She liked her a lot, and she didn’t want the one person who didn’t know her outside of the game to be told about her most recent mistake that she wished she could fix but didn’t have the power to. 

“We were just talking about how our first day of school went,” Willow said. Her voice was neutral. Amity nearly sobbed in relief. 

“Ugh, can we please not?” Lazura moaned followed by a playful chuckle. 

“Rough day?” Augustus asked, following Willow’s lead of dropping their previous conversation.

“Yep,” Lazura responded. “You know, I don’t know why I had any hopes that this year would be different, but hey, at least we have this to look forward to! Who’s up for getting right to the adventure?”

“Caesar and I are almost done with a dungeon right now, we’ll meet you guys in town square when we’re done,” Willow said.

“Already on my way there, what about you Witchling?”

Amity blinked, suddenly realizing that she hadn’t said anything yet but that Lazura would have been able to see that she was in the chat. “I’m uh, logging on now.” She double clicked on the icon on her desktop and watched as the page loaded. “Is there a plan for today?”

“Well, I was thinking we could take a trip to the knee. According to the lore it’s the place where the first wizards went to develop their magic due to its natural power, but mechanically there’s about a fifteen percent increase in experience point gain for magic based classes there. I figured we could go so that you can level up again and Salix and can get some more experience points, it’s a bit of a journey to get to the main area though so I hope you’ve got some snow boots.”

As Lazura spoke, Amity made her way to the town square where the half elf was already waiting, probably triple checking her inventory. She could listen to the ranger talk for hours. “So what about you?” She spoke up after Lazura finished her lecture. “Rangers aren’t considered magic based classes right?”

“Not really, no, ranger-artificers like me and paladins like Caesar mostly work by using magical items we find or make in place of actual spells. Caesar will benefit a little bit because he’s got some healing spell mechanics but definitely not as much as you would.”

“Don’t worry Lazura,” Augustus’ voice came up, “we’ll get to the red mountain eventually.”

“The red mountain?” Amity asked.

“Yeah!” Lazura said, suddenly extremely excited. “It’s an artificer challenge, that’s supposed to have some great loot but-”

“But Lazura keeps trying to do it on her own and dying.” Willow said with a laugh. Amity felt herself relax a little bit more, it didn’t sound like she was mad anymore. That didn’t mean this was the end of that conversation but if she could go the rest of the night without hearing about it that would be enough.

“I just don’t want to bother you guys.” 

“Lazura,” Amity felt herself smile at the half elf’s almost cartoonish exasperation, “There is absolutely nothing you can do that would bother us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I refuse to apologize for the chapter being late, though in my defense, microbiology is a witch and midterms are kicking my butt.
> 
> Anyway, hope you guys enjoyed! I'll try to get the next chapter up soon!


	6. Luz is really starting to bother Amity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Guess Luz is smarter than she looks.

Amity’s POV

Luz was really starting to bother Amity. 

Of course she couldn’t admit that to anyone, Willow and Augustus would lecture her and Boscha would use that as a go-ahead to be worse, but the girl was getting harder to ignore. 

It had been a month since Luz had first dripped into the classroom and it was clear as day that she didn’t care at all. The girl spent the first week zoning out during class, not taking notes, just staring at the whiteboard or the clock with a blank expression. They had the first quiz at the end of that week, Amity got a 95 which was… fine. She’d missed a negative sign but still got partial credit, she’d just need to study harder for the next one. It had somewhat bothered Amity when Luz didn’t even turn her quiz paper over and proceeded to spend the next three days doodling in her notebook. Then she actually slept through their review period for the quiz the next day. But you know what, Amity didn’t care, what did she care if Luz flunked out of the class while she spent hours studying. Hell she’d been tired too after a mystery based mission in the Boiling Isles went a little later than usual the night before but that didn’t stop her from giving Mr. Bump her full attention.

After they got their grades back for the second quiz, Mr. Bump had called Luz to stay at the end of class and after that she made sleeping in class much more of a habit. The first few times Mr. Bump woke her up and told her to pay attention but after the third quiz he stopped bothering and Amity just had to deal with it while Bosha blew spitballs into Luz’s hair while she was passed out.

For those second two quizzes, Amity had gotten an 85 and a 90. She’d almost felt like throwing up. That wasn’t good enough, she’d studied, she’d worked, she did every problem in the book and then some and it wasn’t like the quiz was full of trick questions or anything, she just… didn’t get it. At the same time, Luz was sleeping through classes and throwing her returned quizzes into her binder without even looking at the grades before laying her head back down. Amity wasn’t sure why, but it bothered her how little the other girl cared about this class. Amity was struggling and Luz just didn’t care. It made her feel a little better thinking about the failed marks that the other girl was probably getting because she definitely deserved whatever score she received.

Their first test had been on Friday. It was Monday now and Mr. Bump was handing their papers back. Luz had of course woken up long enough to shove the paper into her backpack while Amity sat stiffly in her seat. She’d studied all week, worked so hard, looked over each question twice. Yet the bright red 91 followed by the sharply written ‘Good Job’ starred up at her like an omen, and that was with the extra credit on the last page. She could see her mother’s disappointed scowl already, nothing was ever good enough but this could go very badly. 

Her mother was always harder on her than her siblings. Amity had never been sure why but anything below a 95 had always been the equivalent of a failure for her. She hadn’t had to tell her mother about the quizzes but she would definitely want to know how the first test went. 

Mr. Bump spent the class going over the test. Amity just stared off into space, thinking of her next course of action. They finished early and Mr. Bump dismissed everyone but Amity had something to do first. 

She strode up to the front of the class and approached Mr. Bump’s desk with her books held tight to her chest. “Mr. Bump, if you have the time, I would like to speak with you about my test grade.”

“Yes, you did very well if I recall,” Mr. Bump looked up from the grade book that he’d been marking. “What would you like to speak about?”

Amity felt stiff. “I would like to know how I can do better on the next one. I studied for hours, did every practice problem in the textbook and then some but I still only got…” she glanced over to Luz who was thankfully still sleeping on her desk since the bell hadn’t rung and woken her up yet. “The score that I got,” Amity continued in a lower voice. 

“Ms. Blight, this is an incredibly advanced class and you’re clearly doing everything I’d recommend to anyone else who was struggling, but you received one of the highest grades in the class, there’s not a lot else you can do at this point.”

Amity felt herself clam up, her heartbeat was pounding in her ears. She had to have something to show her mother that she was working to improve, that was the only way she could minimise whatever reaction the woman would have. “Please, there has to be something,” she wracked her brain, “you said I had one of the highest grades in the class, who did better than me? Maybe I could talk to them.”

Mr. Bump had a look of worry on his face, definitely noticing how anxious Amity was getting. He glanced back at his gradebook, “That… actually might work, I’d been meaning to talk to a student about some issues she’s been having but this could solve both of the problems. Ms. Noceda?” He called, looking past Amity.

Amity glanced behind her to see Luz sit up with a jolt, blinking the sleep out of her eyes. Amity’s shoulders slumped, Luz probably needed extra help too but Amity was admittedly hoping for a one on one thing, but she’d take what she could get, even if it was just something she could tell her mother about. 

Luz glanced around, noticing that the classroom was empty and started to pack up her stuff. “Sorry I missed the bell.” Luz mumbled, slinging her backpack over her shoulder.

“You didn’t miss anything, Ms. Noceda. Would you please come up here for a moment.”

Luz glanced skeptically at Amity before slinging her backpack over her shoulder and shuffling up to the front of the room. “Am I in trouble?”

“Hopefully not after this,” Mr. Bump clasps his hands in front of him on his desk. Luz shifted in place, clearly uncomfortable with the attention even if only Bump was directly looking at her. “Are you aware how much class participation counts towards your overall grade?”

“Fifteen percent,” Luz responded immediately. Amity was surprised she knew that much. 

“Yes, but are you aware that the school has a policy for when a student has a zero in class participation that calls for disciplinary action?”

Luz paused at that, Amity could practically hear the gears turning in her head. She wondered how long it’s been since the girl had used them. Luz looked away, actively avoiding eye contact. “No, I wasn’t aware of that. But does class participation even matter? I mean, if everything else is-”

“The rule was put into place in an effort to prevent students from ditching class.”

“I haven’t been ditching class though,” Luz defended herself. She was raising her voice slightly which really just meant that it was above her usual mumble. Amity realized that this was probably the most she’d ever heard the girl talk like a normal person. 

“True, but that doesn’t change your grade. However, I believe I have a solution to both yours and Amity’s problems.”

“Mr. Bump,” Amity had heard enough of this conversation. “With all due respect, I don’t think that sharing a tutor with Luz will be beneficial use of either of our time.” Whoever Mr. Bump was going to set them up with as a tutor, Amity knew that Luz would just sleep through the whole thing or doodle in her notebook. It was bad enough she was stuck next to the girl during class but if Luz was just going to keep distracting her while their tutor was speaking, then Amity wasn’t seeing much of a point in doing it at all.

Mr. Bump tented his hands, “Ms. Blight, Ms. Noceda would not be sharing a tutor with you, she would be the one tutoring you.”

Amity blinked. It felt like her brain was running on a single ram as she tried to figure out how in the world the girl who slept through every class and had a notebook full of cartoons could possibly be any good at the subject she had to place so much effort into. She looked at Luz who similarly looked like her mind was going a million miles an hour. 

“Ms. Noceda scored a 103 on the exam and I imagine it would have been higher if she had finished the rest of the extra credit. She’s also gotten perfect scores on each quiz.” Amity’s shoulders slumped, she couldn’t believe that that was true, there was just no way, it wasn’t possible. Luz seemed to shrink into herself, uncomfortable with the attention. There was a scowl on her face that probably matched Amity’s perfectly.

“Uh, Mr. Bump,” Luz cleared her throat. “I don’t have time to tutor everyone, I work after school, then I’m doing stuff until really late at night. Does my class participation really matter if I’ve been turning in all of the homework and have been doing fine on the exams. Technically, I have an 85 in the class at this point, that’s more than passing.” 

“Yes, you are doing fine grade wise which is why I would like you to participate in something to show that you actually care about this class.” Bump looked a bit exasperated, “Look, I’m not going to be unreasonable but you’ve been sleeping in class. I’ll say this, you two can work things out on your own schedule, if Ms. Blight’s grade improves, then I will give you five bonus points for class participation which will solve your issue.”

Luz frowned, glancing at Amity before promptly returning her gaze to the floor. It was clear that she did not want to spend more time with Amity and she could say that the feeling was mutual. “Can’t I just stop sleeping in class?” Luz asked.

Mr. Bump frowned at the bluntness of her statement. He hadn’t said it, she had. He cleared his throat, “Of course you not sleeping in class would be the ideal, but unfortunately at this point, unless you agree to this arrangement, the administration will need to contact your parents.” Luz’s face fell at that. “This is a very lucky final chance for you to avoid that. If you agree to this I will give you one point in the class participation category immediately to avoid having to contact your parents and four more points if Amity’s overall grade improves. If it becomes apparent that you aren’t helping her, your parents will be contacted immediately.” He straightened some papers on his desk. “Does that sound alright with you Amity?”

Frankly Amity was still in shock that Luz had somehow gotten a 103 on the test. “Uh, yeah, sure.”

The bell rang, Luz made a move towards the exit but was stopped short by Mr. Bump. “And how does that sound to you Luz?”

The girl didn’t turn around but Amity could still see the look of bitterness on her face. She clearly did not want to do this but well, neither did Amity so tough luck. “Fine,” the brunette turned her head to look back at Amity, “let me talk to my boss and see what I can do about timing.”

Then she was out the door before Amity could mutter an ‘okay.’

Luz’s POV

Luz got out of that classroom as quickly as she could. This was so stupid, why couldn’t she just keep doing what she had been? Why did there have to be some stupid rule? She was trying very hard not to let her anger show as she marched to the far corner of the school where her locker was situated.

She was almost there when something shoved against her shoulder and suddenly she was pushed up against a locker. “Hey loser.” Luz’s throat tightened, she didn’t have the energy to deal with this right now, not that she ever had the energy for it. Boscha’s grip tightened on her collar causing the hoodie to dig into the back of her neck. “Look at me nerd!”

Luz tried and failed to swallow the lump in her throat as she met the other girl’s gaze. She was a good three inches taller than the dyed red head but as the soccer player had her pinned against the hard metal locker, she felt a lot smaller. The smirk on Boscha’s lips ran chills down Luz’s spine as the two of them wasted the precious seconds of hallway passing time in a staring contest. Luz didn’t say anything, she tried to keep her expression calm but could tell by the gleam in the other girl’s eye that her nervousness was showing through.

“Where’s your lunch money Noceda?” Boscha finally broke the silence. 

Luz blinked, “I… I don’t have any.” It felt as if something cold were gripping her chest, she was scared to find out where this was going. 

Boscha’s eyes narrowed, they were as dark as coal. “Your lunch then, I didn’t see any in your locker so where is it?”

The latina bit her tongue, hesitating before shaking her head. She didn’t have the spare cash for lunch money, and after a few too many instances like this one at her last school, she didn’t have the spare food to have her lunch stolen either. Luz probably hadn’t eaten lunch at school since she was twelve, thank god her mother didn’t know or else it would lead to another earful about the importance of nutrition that wouldn’t fix the fact that whether she brought anything or not, she wouldn’t get to keep it long enough to eat it.

Boscha’s knuckles pressed into the ribs beneath her collarbone making Luz hiss as she tried not to show how much it really hurt. Her new grip was forcing the front of Luz’s hoodie into her throat. “Well,” Boscha said as if the girl in front of her wasn’t wheezing. ‘“If you don’t have anything, then what am I supposed to eat?” She pressed harder making Luz wince. “What do you think the rest of the school will do when they find out that you’re the reason that I wasn’t able to keep my energy up during soccer?”

Luz thought about pointing out that soccer season was in the spring and that it was barely October but thought better of it. Instead she pursed her lips and braced herself for whatever Boscha was going to do to her.

“What’s going on over here?” A voice called from down the hall. Boscha’s grip released as the sound of high heels echoed against the tile floor. Luz stayed slumped against the lockers, trying to steady her breathing as Boscha pasted a sickeningly sweet smile onto her face and turned to face the woman walking towards them. 

Luz looked up at the woman. Regal was the only word that could be used to describe her. She wore a long, black dress with matching hair and blue eyes that seemed to glow in contrast to her pale skin. She walked as though there was a broomstick attached to her spine. The woman also had the disinterested look of someone who wasn’t a teacher but held some higher authority.

“Vice Principal Clawthorn!” Boscha exclaimed as the woman approached. “Luz tripped and we were just helping her back to her feet.” The red head shot Luz a pointed look and brushed some nonexistent dirt off of the girl’s shoulder for emphasis. She had to fight not to flinch at the contact.

Luz glanced back over to the woman, the name Clawthorn sounded familiar. She couldn’t recall ever meeting the vice principal but she’d probably read the name in an email somewhere. “Yep,” Luz’s voice was strained. “I’m a bit clumsy.” She tried for a reassuring smile. She was not very good at those.

The vice principal gave her a once over and nodded. “Next period is starting soon. I recommend you all get to class.” With that the woman continued on, the click of her heels fading as she turned the corner.

The second she was out of sight Boscha started to walk off, slamming Luz back against the locker as she went.

Luz waited until they were gone to finally head to her locker but as she approached, her heart sank. Releasing a defeated sigh, Luz removed the broken lock from its latch and opened the door. A glob of shaving cream mixed with mustard fell out and plopped onto her shoes. Thankfully her laptop and the more important of her textbooks were in her backpack but the rest of the contents of her locker were ruined including the gym clothes she’d brought for later that day. Luz slammed her locker shut and punched the one beside it but no one heard because the bell that signified the start of next period rang off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it's been a little while since I've last posted, had a few papers due but it's not like I committed to a schedule. I did write this instead of paying attention in English class.   
> Now to answer a few questions.  
> There was a comment about why the name was Lazura instead of Luzura, I did have a bit of a debate about which one I should go with and Luzura felt a little too obvious and would have been something that Amity might have noticed.  
> Also there was another comment about getting 1d4 psychic damage from typos, sorry about that, but please point them out to me when they do happen so I can go back and fix them. Hopefully this long rest was enough to regain the hit points though. ; )


	7. Studying

Amity’s POV

Amity frowned and checked her watch, of course Luz was late.

Amity had had a very stressful conversation with her parents last night about her test grade and the steps that she had already taken to improve it. She’d told them about the tutor but strategically avoided providing a name because her parents would definitely take that as a go ahead to dig up everything and would no doubt discover how unsuitable the girl was. Thankfully, Lazura had been online last night as always so Amity was able to relax a little bit with her for a while. Don’t get Amity wrong, she liked playing with Willow and Gus but the alone time she got with Lazura on the main weekdays were something that she looked forward to. It was thanks to those days that Amity had been able to improve a lot and had even leveled up a few times. Not that the extra experience points were the real reason she enjoyed playing with her.

She felt a small heat rise in her cheeks as she thought back to last night. Amity had been experimenting with a lot of different kinds of magic over the past month, practicing in game and reading the pages and pages of lore and statistics that Lazura sent her in her spare time. The ranger had noted that Amity seemed to be using abomination magic a lot, and Amity had explained that she was really starting to like it. The abomination system used a lot of mana and some complicated symbols to trace but resulted in a goopy minion that Amity could control. Different symbols lead to different kinds of abominations, some were fighters, some were shields which were particularly useful considering she didn’t have too many hit points because of her magic based class. 

Lazura had been so happy when Amity decided that she’d wanted to specialize in abomination magic. There was no ‘are you sure this is the right decision’ or ‘is this really what you want’ that her parents always commented whenever they made a decision for herself. All Lazura did was immediately drag Amity’s avatar over to the mission board in town square and pointed to a paper that referenced a need for someone to investigate strange happenings down in The Shadow Swamp. 

“This is a mission for the Black Willow Staff, it specializes in abomination magic.” Lazura had said, her voice giddy with excitement. “I’ve never had a reason to go on it but we can go tomorrow if your up for it! Let’s see, most staphs are guarded by the kind of things that they amplify magic for and abominations are weak to…” Amity kept listening as the ranger explained the main factors that would go into the fight and as Lazura bought a bunch of ice tipped arrows and frost daggers and each of them got a pair of water resistant boots so that they wouldn’t be at half speed in the muck of the swamp.

Amity bit her lip as she doodled their party’s sigil in the corner of her notebook to pass the time while waiting for Luz to show up. It was an interesting symbol composed of a triangle with a few lines through it and an intricate background, apparently Lazura had designed it herself which Amity thought was really cool. “It’s based on a symbol for a light cantrip that got taken down early on in the game’s development,” the ranger had told her this while they were trekking through The Field of Night, a beautiful setting with a night sky that seemed to go on forever. She had pointed to a constellation that was of the same symbol and talked about the other constellations and the texture feature the developers used on the grass and how the audio file only repeats every six hours which is apparently impressive and Amity listened to her talk for hours and could have listened to her forever.

“You ready?”

Amity snapped her notebook shut as Luz suddenly appeared in front of her. “You’re late,” Amity said as she glared up at the girl. Luz didn’t seem to care.

“The bell only rang two minutes ago,” Luz said before shoving a bright pink helmet in her direction.

Amity held it tentatively, “And what am I supposed to do with this?” 

Luz raised an eyebrow, “It’s a helmet. You wear it. Now come on or I’m gonna be late.” Luz started walking towards the front doors of the school while sticking a purple helmet on her own head.

“Wait!” Amity called out as she struggled to shove her notebook into her backpack while following the girl out the door. “Aren’t we supposed to go to the library or something? I thought you said you were going to talk to your boss.”

“I did,” Luz said as she twisted in the code that unlocked the rattiest bike Amity had ever seen from the rack. “She said it was okay for you to be in the back with me as long as I was still working at my usual pace or took a project home with me.” Luz looked at her from the seat of the bike. Amity was still clutching the pink helmet in her hand like she wasn’t sure what to do with it. She couldn’t believe that Luz didn’t even have the decency to give Amity her full attention while she was supposed to be helping her. The latina gave an exasperated sigh, “You know princess some of us actually have to work and this is the only part of my day that I might be able to multitask enough to help you so you can either get on my bike or we can figure out some way to swap test papers during the next exam.”

Amity blinked, not only was Luz being absolutely insufferable, but was the girl seriously suggesting cheating? She could only imagine the fit that her parents would have if they found out the thought had even crossed her mind, a chill running down her spine as she thought about what her parents would do to her. Thankfully, the autumn air made it possible to hide the action as a normal shiver.

A sigh escaped Amity as she pursed her lips and looked over the bike. It didn’t look like it could hold both of their weight but Amity had no doubt that if she didn’t get on the bike within the next twenty seconds Luz would leave without her, extra credit be damned. There was a flat ledge over the back tire that was likely for strapping a milk crate to or something which Amity could probably sit on. Amity glanced around the parking lot, the buses had left and anyone staying after was inside so there was no one around to see her interacting with Luz. Finally, she bit her tongue to avoid saying some choice words and sat on the ledge, her fingers gripping Luz’s backpack for security as the girl kicked off and started pedaling.

Luz’s POV

Luz had never been so grateful that The Owl House was downhill from the school. She’d honestly been a little surprised that Amity had actually gotten on the bike with her, the girl must have been really desperate for a tutor. As usual, it only took a few minutes to get to The Owl House though it felt longer with Amity making noises and pulling on her backpack around every turn no matter how slowly Luz was peddling.

“This is where you work?” The distaste was eminent in Amity’s voice as they stepped off the bike in front of the store.

“Yep,” Luz said. She chained her bike up to its pipe in the alleyway and nodded to the other girl to follow her

The ring of a bell sounded as the two of them walked through the door. Luz could practically feel Amity staring at all of the crappy nick-nacks and half broken antiques. Suddenly a sound like a dying animal came from the corner of the store making Amity practically jump out of her skin and Luz didn’t bother to hide her satisfactory smile as she nodded towards the stupid cuckoo clock that went off every twenty seven minutes regardless of the actual time. “Yeah, that’s Hooty,” Luz said, giving the weird looking owl tube that popped out of the clock a little poke.

“There is something wrong with that thing,” Amity said. Judging by how she looked actively disturbed by Hooty, Luz could guess she wasn’t just referring to how the time on its face was off. Frankly, Luz didn’t blame her for being creeped out. The thing was awful.

“Yeah, apparently that was here when Eda moved in. It’s got some kind of glue keeping it on the wall and the last time Eda tried to take it down, well…” Luz let her voice trail off and pulled up the picture frame that was on the wall text to the clock to reveal the hole that Luz’s boss had made with a sledgehammer. “You know that phrase, ‘even a broken clock is right twice a day’? Yeah that doesn’t apply to this. We don’t know what’s wrong with it either.”

Suddenly there was a crash from behind the Employe Only door and both Luz and Amity jumped that time. Luz started towards the door calling out “Eda, you okay?”

“You’re late!” Came the response and Luz sighed in relief as the door opened and Eda tumbled out, wrestling with some Christmas lights that she had somehow managed to get completely tangled in.

“I’m five minutes early.” Luz responded with a small smile as King rushed over and scaled her like a climbing wall to get to one of his perches on her shoulder. At that moment he seemed to notice Amity and began doing his odd high pitched yipping noise that can’t be traced back to any known animal. “You’re fine, that’s Amity. I warned you about her yesterday, remember?” Luz cooed in her baby voice while giving him chin scratches. With him still on her shoulder she went behind the counter and helped untangle Eda, leaving Amity frozen with an expression that was some mix of confusion and disgust. Luz relished that expression.

“So, is that the idiot you told me about yesterday?” Eda asked as Luz managed to find and loosen the main knot, releasing the owl lady from her bindings. 

“Hey!” Amity protested at the same time that Luz said “Yeah.”

Amity’s face suddenly got a lot redder and she shot Luz a glare which Luz ignored in favor of wrapping the lights in a less amorphic form. “It’s still alright if she hangs out in the back room with me right?” she asked, placing the bundle onto the counter.

“I don’t care, just don’t let her touch my stuff,” Eda huffed. She plugged in the lights and to what definitely wasn’t Luz’s surprise, they didn’t light. The older woman tapped on the bulbs disappointedly while Luz gestured for Amity to follow her through the employee only door. “Oh! And remember that the door at the end of the hallway is off limits!”

Luz shivered, remembering the first and last time she’d opened that door in search of a bathroom. “Don’t need to tell me twice.”

Luz guided Amity over to her usual work table. The other girl watched with a slightly judgemental expression as Luz pushed some of her works in progress to the side or onto the floor. “So I figured your notes are probably fine,” Luz grabbed a DVD player that Eda had gotten for pennies a few days ago which Luz had promptly explained could be sold for thirty bucks easy with a little work the second the guy was gone. “I guess for now, just start on the homework and let me know if you have any questions.”

Amity looked at Luz like she was crazy. “That’s it? That’s all the instructions you’re giving me?”

“What do you want from me?” Luz grabbed a screwdriver out of a box on the floor and started disassembling the device in front of her. “I’m not a teacher, I don’t know what you do or don’t know and I’m not just going to repeat the lecture, that’s what youtube is for.”

Amity crossed her arms in a huff, she hadn’t sad down yet. “How do I even know you’re any good at this? You’ve done nothing but… literally nothing for the last month of class and somehow you’re some kind of math whizz? I don’t buy it.”

Luz let out an exasperated sigh and put down the screwdriver just long enough to dig her crumpled exam paper out of her backpack. “Here, compare our answers or whatever.”

Clenching her jaw, probably to relieve some tension, Amity unfolded the test and started looking it over. Taking this as an opportunity, Luz got back to work as the other girl flipped through the pages and eventually sat down in the chair next to Luz. She pulled out her own exam paper and her notebook, doing out some of the problems. 

“You’re handwriting is crap.” Amity finally speaks after several minutes of silence.

“So I’ve been told.”

“You also do it differently than how Mr. Bump told us to do it.”

“Yeah,” Luz said, before blowing some dust off of some internal wires. “Mr. Bump wants us to do the algebra on the equation instead of the numbers. I don’t like doing that. It confuses me and makes me question the units at the end. I just prefer to work around the equals sign, it also takes out the time it takes to rewrite the formula a million and one times.”

“Huh.” Amity had her eyebrows knit as she actually contemplated Luz’s plan of action. Not that Luz noticed because she was definitely focusing completely on her work and not at look thinking about how Amity actually didn't look all that horrible when she wasn’t angry. “Okay.” With that, Amity set Luz’s test down on the table while she filed her own away in her binder and pulled out that night’s homework.

It was pretty easy going from there. For the most part, Amity and Luz did their prospective work in silence, Amity only occasionally getting stuck on a problem and Luz, not even looking up from what she was working on, explaining that she needed to combine the outcome of one equation into the variable of another or connecting it back to the last chapter in the book. In nearly no time, Amity had finished with that night’s assignment and was just kind of staring into space seemingly in shock with how easy it had been. Luz had never given her a direct answer, just offered suggestions for how Amity should be thinking through the problem and it seemed to work wonders for her. 

“Anything else you want to ask?” Luz asked, beginning to place the pieces of the player back where they belong inside of the casing.

Amity blinked, like she had been pulled out of a deep thought. “No. I mean, yes? I don’t know.” She was talking a bit faster than usual. 

“If you’re gonna ask, might as well ask”

There was a pause. “Why didn’t you finish the extra credit?”

“Huh?” Luz spared a moment of attention to give Amity a confused look.

“The extra credit, you did three problems, then stopped after writing two numbers into the fourth. I know you didn’t run out of time because I remember you sleeping for the last ten minutes of the test.”

“Oh, that.” Luz snapped the player’s case back into place and started replacing the screws. “Yeah, I didn't realize that it was extra credit until number four, so I stopped.”

“Wait, you thought that the extra credit was part of the main test? Those problems were twice as hard, I could barely figure out the first one.” Amity’s voice had a tinge of disbelief in it.

“I just didn’t really notice.” Luz responded honestly. “Math is math, if you have all of the tools you need, one problem is the same as any other, just longer and with more moving parts. Frankly if I’d realized that the first three weren’t mandatory sooner I wouldn’t have done those either. It’s not like he’d shove any extra points I get into my class participation percentage anyway, which is stupid.” Luz chose to ignore the way that Amity was looking at her as thought she were somehow interested in what Luz had to say.

With the final screw in place, Luz pressed the on button and pumped her fist in the air when the screen turned on. “Yes!” She still needed to test it though. With a moment’s thought, Luz went out into the main floor, keeping her distance from a customer Eda was somehow selling a comic from Free Comic Book Day to, and grabbed a DVD at random from off of a shelf that was nearly covered in dust. 

“What time are you getting picked up again?” Luz asked, carefully placing the disk into the player.

“I sent my siblings the address when we got here, they should be here around 4:30. Why?”

“Well,” Luz started with a slight frown. “It means that we’re probably not going to get to the end of Barbie and the Twelve Dancing Princesses today, sorry about that.”

Amity let out a snort of a laugh, before shaking her head, not really trying to hide the small, amused smile on her face. Before shrugging and grabbing some other homework from her backpack as Luz pressed play. Luz grabbed another project from off of the floor to work on while the movie played smoothly in the background.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know when you're procrastinating so much that you become productive again? This is that.  
> Can someone please explain to me why I can write this 2972 word chapter in one sitting but can't even start a 3000 word essay on how Shakespeare depicts intelligence as a valuable trait in a leader even though I already have my textual evidence and secondary sources at the ready? Finals week can't be over soon enough you guys.   
> Anyway thank you all so much for your love and support I look forward to reading your comments every time I write!


	8. Into the Shadow Swamp

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's this? A chapter that didn't take a month to come out? How the hell did this happen? It's almost like I have a PowerPoint presentation due in 7 hours and decided to write this before starting that (don't worry I finished the presentation before posting this). Anyway, I know some of you have been craving more in-game action, so this is a little treat for you guys. Hope you enjoy!

Amity’s POV

With Lazura, Salix and Caesar at her side, Amity trudged through the muck of the Shadow Swamp. Their torches barely reached the edge of the path they were on and the eerie quiet was only ever interrupted by the occasional skittering of a creature just at the edge of the light.

Lazura had warned Amity that this was one of the more difficult missions before they’d attempted it for the first time Tuesday night. Unfortunately that was all Lazura really had to offer in terms of information since she wasn’t a wizard and therefore had never tried to get the Black Willow Staff on her own and naturally she refused to look up spoilers for the missions she hadn’t done yet. She and Amity had quickly realized that this mission was not for the weak. Amity died three times on the starting path alone, then five more times against the main boss causing her to throw her headphones down onto her desk in frustration the last time. The headphones had practically been broken already when her brother had gifted them to her, but thanks to that little outburst they became nearly unusable. Where before the sound had been scratchy at best and she sometimes needed to repeat herself for the others to understand her, now she basically had to decipher what the others were saying at all times and for a while she’d debated just using her cell phone to call Willow and talk to them that way.

After that first night though, Lazura and her had done some reevaluating of their resources and agreed that they would need the entire party for this.

Cue Friday night. The four of them were on their third run, the first one of them to die had been Caesar who hadn’t seen the ripple of shadows and got pulled into darkness by a shadow hand. Lazura had called the hand ‘Charlie’ in reference to some other game that Amity hadn’t played. The second of them to die was, once again, Amity. After Caesar got nabbed, they were able to make it all the way to the boss on their next try where Amity accidentally drew agro while she was way too close and got clobbered by a shadow abomination.

This time, they were sure to be more careful. Willow had created a bonfire to deter a shadow creature and Lazura was doing a good job of looking out for the ripples and letting the rest of them know when to get away from one of the edges before the hands popped out. Finally, after what felt like an eternity of playing chicken with shadows, the pathway opened up again and they were once again in the torchlit clearing that held the main boss.

“Alright,” Lazura’s voice came out a bit garbled through Amity’s headphones. “Remember your positions. Salix, you and I are on clearing control, Caesar, you and Witchling are on the boss. Witchling, don’t-”

“Don’t get too close, I got it.” Amity spoke a little bit more defined than usual to make sure that the others could understand her.

“Yep! That’s what I’m for!” Gus’ voice piped in. His avatar started doing a little dance and promptly got smacked as a tentacle sprung out the ground. “Ow! Oh, wait, no my health is still good guys!” 

“Of course it is, you’re the tank!” Willow chimed in. Amity laughed a little as the four of them attacked the shadow tentacles and did what they could to avoid taking damage. This was the first wave, not difficult per say but it was easy to get cocky and take some unwanted HP reduction.

With the tentacles wiped out, the muck at the center of the clearing started to churn and suddenly the hand of the boss, made of glopping sentient shadow, sprung out of the ground and clawed the rest of itself to the surface. It appeared as a stationary torso with three glowing purple eyes before, right on schedule, it let out an ear piercing roar as more tentacles sprouted up around the clearing. 

The tentacles weren’t Amity’s job however, all she needed to worry about was the abomination. She swiftly kited around the tentacles, making sure to stay out of their hit boxes, and positioned herself so that Caesar wasn’t in a position to take damage from her. She fired off a few ice spells, trying not to drain her mana too much in one sitting while Caesar charged in from another angle. They were doing well, Caesar was holding onto the Boss’s agro, taking hits that would have one-shotted Amity and delivering some heavy damage right back. Amity fired off spell after spell while dodging any new tentacles that the thing summoned, the ice spells from her basic staff doing a good job of slowing it down so that Caesar could get in more hits before he had to kite a swing. 

During this time, Salix and Lazura were taking care of the tentacles wherever they popped up. Salix was using spells that had wide area-of-effects to take care of pockets of them that didn’t have any other players around to clear the area a bit so that they had room to move. Lazura on the other hand had the more difficult job of being precise. She was tasked with taking out the tentacles that sprouted up near Caesar and herself. Lazura had managed to figure out exactly how much HP the tentacles had and stocked up on some of the more high caliber arrows that she knew would be able to one-shot them. Thankfully, even though it takes a moment for the half-elf to aim at the wriggling shadows, after getting to this point for the sixth time, Lazura had the process down to a science. She was able to fire off arrow after arrow without even needing to stop moving. Tentacles sputtered and died around Amity and Caesar with a single arrow in every one of them in the same moment they shot up from the ground.

For the first time, the mission was going well, amazingly even. The shadow abomination was almost down to half its health, this was the first time they’d gotten this far and they were all still doing fine. Amity had a wide smile on her face as she saw the red bar at the top of the screen go down more and more. Then suddenly, the abomination started shuddering, and the tentacles fell back into the muck.

“Okay everybody?” Lazura’s garbled voice came over her headphones. “That’s gotta be its half-health animation, be prepared for it to change up its strategy.”

“Gotcha!” The other party members spoke up and prepared themselves for whatever was to come. 

Then, naturally, the abomination started to spin. It turned into a tornado of shadow muck and some kind of projectile started firing out from within it.

Amity was barely able to dodge out of the way as a glob of shadow sludge arched in her direction only for her to hear a sizzle from somewhere behind her. She turned around in time to see a shadow hand emerging from from the gap in light where the sludge had put out the torch. Amity’s eyes widened as she retreated from the hand. “Lazura! The torches!” she called out to the ranger.

“Huh?” of course Lazura couldn’t hear her properly through her messed up microphone and was more focused on the fact that Caesar couldn’t get close enough to hit the abomination in this form.

“The torches! It’s putting them out!”

Lazura’s avatar finally turned to face her and Amity was pretty sure she could make out the half-elf saying “Oh. Oh no.” Amity could practically hear the gears turning in the other girl’s head only for her hesitation to lead to another torch being put out and more hands emerging as the darkness spread.

Salix and Caesar finally realized what was going on and Gus started to run away from the hands while Salix readied a spell. “I’ll light the torches back up with a minor fire spell!” the fairy offered.

“No!” Lazura shouted loud enough to make Amity jump. “The torches are wooden, that’ll just destroy them for good.” Amity could hear some static that sounded a lot like a frustrated groan. “Okay! Okay, I have a plan. Caesar, I need you to stand in front of me. You need to be my shield cuz I’m not gonna be able to move.” The paladin got into position without question and readied his shield to dampen some of the damage that he was bound to take. Lazura kept talking as her avatar rifled through its bag. “Salix and Witchling, keep giving that thing everything you’ve got, just make sure Witchling is the one who gets the final shot or else we won’t get the right loot.” 

With that, the ranger-artificer stood up brandishing some weird rope thing that Amity had never seen before. 

“A sling? Really? That’s the worst weapon in the game, why do you even have that?” Willow sounded nearly disgusted at the idea of using the item.

“What makes it so bad?” Amity asked as she kited another glob of sludge and threw another spell out at the monster. 

Lazura didn’t respond, but her avatar started swinging the sling in a circle, it looked like whatever was in the leather strap was smoking but it may have been too dark to see at this point.

“It’s bad because you can’t move while using it and it does, like, two damage at…” Caesar’s voice died off as Lazura launched the smoking bundle at one of the dead torches and it suddenly burst back to life, the hands disappearing in the new light. “Most…” Caesar continued, his voice low with shock. “Welp, we have our instructions.” He brandished the shield once again as Salx and Amity started going after the boss hard.

Amity was pretty sure she could make out Lazura chuckling into her microphone as she relit as many torches as she could. The process was taking longer than Amity felt comfortable with, it took several seconds for Lazura to relight each torch and the abomination kept putting them out. She and Salix kept firing spells at the monster before them, Amity even using a larger chunk oof her mana to make some basic shield abominations to give them a little extra cover. The spells were doing some good damage, but the plant magic that Salix specialized in was practically useless against swamp creatures and Amity’s mana could only regenerate so quickly. Even the two of them together couldn’t match what Caesar could do with a single swing of his sword.

Amity watched as the red meter at the top of her screen slowly and steadily went down. 

“Guys I’m getting low!” Gus’ voice squeaked out. He’d been holding his position but even with all of his HP, there was only so much damage he could take.

“Just keep holding on, we’re almost there!” Lazura lit up another torch, she was getting better at it but it wasn’t making the boss lose any more health. “I am kind of running out of ignifers here though.”

Gus suddenly cursed as his avatar collapsed and Lazura immediately got hit by a glob of abomination goo and had to run to dodge another.

“Oh, that did a lot of damage.” Lazura hissed, taking a precious second to swap weapons back to her bow and launching a few ice arrows in rapid succession while ducking around the flying goo. The abomination took this opportunity to snuff out two more torches. Shadow hands were starting to creep in, pushing the remaining members of the party inward. 

“Lazura here!” Salix called and started doing a spell. A wall of thorns erupted from the area in front of Lazura forming a barrier for her to hide behind.

“Perfect!” The half-elf called out, crouching down behind the cover and taking a few more seconds to switch back to her sling. 

Then, all at once, Salix was struck with abomination goo, and since she didn’t have the weight factor of Caesar’s heavy armor, she was sent backwards just far enough for one of the creeping hands to make a grab and pull her into the darkness. “Oh come on! That’s not fair!” Amity heard Willow groan into the microphone as her character’s HP drained immediately to nothing.

The abomination’s health bar was nearly diminished but they weren’t done yet. Amity kept firing spells, doing everything she could to make sure her mana didn’t get too low. She glanced back at Lazura who was trying to keep the torches lit but so many of them were out, then, finally, the wall of thorns collapsed as a projectile took out the last of its HP. 

Panic raced through Amity’s mind and without even thinking, she cast a shield abomination in the exact location that the wall of thorns had been in and dove behind it next to Lazura.

“How’s your mana doing?” Lazura asked, lighting up another torch. She wasn’t worrying about the torches on the other side of the clearing any more, just the ones that kept away the hands closest to them. 

“Zero.” Amity winced as the word left her mouth. The more mana you used the longer it took for it to regenerate. The abomination took a lot of mana to create and it was dying fast from all the hits it was taking. 

Lazura was quiet for a moment, just focusing on lighting as many torches as possible while the shadow abomination kept snuffing them out. “Okay,” finally came the response. “You’re not going to have a lot of time, the tiniest window actually, but I believe in you. That thing is on its last legs.

“Are you sure about this?”

There was a moment of hesitation, then “Positive.” Suddenly, Amity’s abomination died and Lazura rushed forward, taking a hit that was meant for Amity and then collapsing as her own HP reached zero. 

Amity squeaked and started to run. She looked at the blue meter on her screen. Zero mana. More torches were being snuffed out and Lazura wasn’t here to relight them anymore. Zero Mana. The hands were creeping forward, pushing her closer and closer to the vortex of an abomination. Zero mana. They’d worked so hard to get here, just for her, and she’d let them down.

One mana.

Amity didn’t hesitate. The hands were right on her heels but she took the precious moment to fire the spell. The single mana Ice Knife spell that glowed a brilliant blue as it laced through the air and right as the hand behind her started to reach its fingers around her, the knife struck the abomination with a critical hit. 

The abomination ceased spinning and shuddered in place. It’s three purple eyes staring into nothing as it started to expand and sputter out some dying garble of a noise. Then it exploded, coating everything in the clearing with purple goo, including Amity’s avatar, and in its place was a staff made of twisting black and purple willow wood that radiated a soft lavender light as it floated in place where the shadow abomination had stood.

Amity took the staff in her hands, turning it over, then thrust it towards the sky. The violet light shot upward and struck the clouds above like lightning. Suddenly the darkness started dissipating and the swamp was cast with yellow sunlight from a bright blue sky.

The second, Amity brought the staff back down, the Bullywog child who had greeted them at the entrance of the swamp as the quest giver, came running out from the path that had led them to the clearing. “Thank you so much hero! You have banished the evil from the land and now my family can home just in time for the harvest. Here’s the gold that I promised you and you can keep the staff for your troubles and as a token for our appreciation!” Of course it was the most canned RPG character speech ever but Amity felt a swell of joy in her chest nonetheless.

Amity could hear the voices of her friends talking through her headset but she was too busy to decipher what they were saying as the notification box appeared on her screen. Achievement Unlocked: Witchling has acquired the Black Shadow Staff.

Smiling from ear to ear, Amity clicked the button to complete the quest and the screen faded into white until she reappeared back at the start of the entrance of the swamp, Black Willow Staff in hand.

Lazura was the first to notice her. “You did it! I knew you could do it!” She shouted and rushed over to where Amity appeared. She could hear the smile in the girl’s voice and just knowing that Lazura was happy for her was enough to drown out the rest of the world for that moment. 

Caesar and Salix both came up to congratulate her as well but all she could think about was the way that Lazura had been so sure that she would be able to do it. The way that she had rushed forward and taken the hit just to give Amity those precious few seconds to get her mana up. 

She couldn’t have done this without her, without any of them really, but especially not without her.

Together, they went back to Town Square, divided up the gold, got some healing potions and hung out in the tavern talking about the mission. One by one Gus and Willow logged off, leaving just Amity and Lazura sitting in the digital tavern, drinking mead made of ones and zeroes while they talked about anything and everything.

I knew you could do it. 

Amity felt her heart pound heavily in her chest, her face was heating up and for a second she thought she was having a panic attack for the first time since she’d started playing the game. Then Lazura laughed and Amity’s breath caught in her throat. 'Oh,' she realized. 'So that’s what it is.'

All too soon, Lazura had to go. It was two-forty five in the morning and apparently something happened that made her need to go immediately but that’s always what happened.

“Hey, I’ll talk to you tomorrow okay? Happy Saturday!”

“Talk to you tomorrow.” Amity could barely get the words out before the bling sound from discord indicated that Lazura had logged off. Amity’s face was still hot, and it felt like her heart was stuck in her throat. 

Slowly and steadily, she took a deep breath, closed her laptop, removed her headphones from over her ears, and promptly threw them against the wall as hard as she could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was really fun to write and somehow ended up longer than the ten page paper I mentioned last week despite me doing this in a single afternoon as opposed to the two days it took me to do the paper. I want to thank everyone who's been leaving comments, they mean so much to me, I love hearing all of your feedback and hearing about the things that you're looking forward to makes it easier for me to plot out what happens next. Be warned though, there's some angst coming soon.


	9. A difficult conversation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a little bit shorter than others but that's because I did something a little bit different this week. I wrote two shorter chapters because I realized that even though they deal with similar things they are different scenes and needed to be separated by more than just a few extra 'enters'. Don't worry though, by the time that you're done with this chapter the next one should be up,
> 
> Also be warned, these two chapters are going to be pretty angsty, hope you guys are okay with that.

Luz’s POV

Luz let out a groan from deep within her throat as she stood up from the chair she’d been sitting in for hours now and stretched before making her way into the kitchen to start heating up dinner. She was still feeling pretty proud of herself for coming up with the plan with the sling. 

For the most part, Salix and Caesar were right when they said that it was a bad weapon. It was a basic starting weapon that was grown out of nearly immediately in exchange for a bow or something else with range that could do more than just make an enemy aware of your location. At least, that was the case until Luz had found some artificer blueprints for different sling projectiles. The two she had currently were the ignifers that lit up flammable objects like torches from a distance, and devorantis which would make armor clad enemies need to remove their helmets which would leave them open to more effective shots. There are a few others that she knew of but hadn’t been able to locate yet, it was only a matter of time though.

“Hey mija.” Luz turned from her position in front of the microwave to see her mom shut the door behind her.

“Hi Mama, how was work?” She asked, leaning her head down slightly so that her mom could plant a slight kiss against her forehead despite Luz being about a head taller than her.

“Same as always,” Her mom sounded absolutely exhausted as she took a seat at the kitchen table but Luz pretended not to notice. “What have you cooked up today? That smells absolutely amazing.”

Luz smiled as the woman sat down at the table. “Nothing too fancy, just sausage and rice, but I used some of the spices from the cupboard to give it a kick.” She placed the first plate down in front of her mom before putting her own in the microwave. Luz wasn’t really a fan of sausage, the texture bothered her but she’d found it at a really good discount at the grocery store because it was about to go bad. Hopefully the spice would be enough to help her get over how much she disliked it.

“How was school today?” Her mom asked as Luz grabbed her own plate and sat across from her.

“Oh, you know, same as always.” Luz tried to smile as she used the same term that her mom had only to wince in pain as she stretched her lip a little too much in the process. And of course her mom noticed.

“Luz, what’s wrong?” She looked at Luz with concern and the girl instinctively used her hand to cover up her lip, trying to play it off like she was leaning on her hand.

“What? Nothing. Nothing’s wrong Mama, I’m-” She was cut off as her mom reached out and gently removed her hand from her face. The look of concern was still there as the woman took a napkin and wiped away the makeup Luz had sloppily applied to her mouth making Luz suck in a breath at the contact as the bruise and busted lip were revealed.

“What happened to you?” Luz averted her gaze at her mom’s question. “Luz. What happened?”

“Mama, it’s nothing. Really,” Luz tried to chuckle but ended up wincing again. It was so much easier to pretend from the other side of a computer screen. “I- someone opened up a locker too fast right as I was walking by. It was an accident, I just didn’t want you to worry.” She offered a reassuring smile as big as she could make without opening the cut on her lip again. It was the truth… sort of. Except that the locker hadn’t been open, and that Boscha had shoved her face into it, and that Luz was lucky her nose had stopped bleeding after half an hour, and that it wasn’t an accident. “Really, it’s nothing.”

Her mom looked at her with worry in her eyes. Luz knew she didn’t believe her but also knew that she didn’t have the energy to drag the truth out of her either, or the time to deal with the issue if she actually told her what was going on. This is the way it’s been for years. “Okay, mija.” The nurse finally said, her voice practically a whisper. They ate in silence for a few minutes and when they were done Luz grabbed the plates and started to clean them in the sink.

“How are we doing on groceries?” Luz’s mom asked after a little while.

Luz hesitated, that was gonna be an issue. “Yeah, we’re pretty much out.” They were down to a half a bag of rice and three cans of beans in the pantry. “I made a list, I was gonna run it by you before making the trip after work tomorrow.” She took the slip of paper down from its magnet on the refrigerator door. The prices were listed next to the items, checked that morning from the supermarket’s website with the discounts from coupons being taken into account as well as the tax in the total she’d written at the bottom.

Luz held her breath as her mom looked over the list. “Do you need any more cereal? Anything else for lunches?”

“No, we still have some from last week.” Luz lied through her teeth, keeping her eyes on the dishes she’d been scrubbing even though they were already clean. They’d run out of cereal three days ago and they’d never had stuff for lunch in the first place. She’d pretty much been running on dinner and the snacks that Eda pretended not to notice went missing while Luz worked in her kitchen. Her mom didn’t notice because she always got her morning coffee and lunch from the hospital cafeteria for free and it was Luz’s job to cook dinner.

Luz grimaced and put the plates in the drying rack. She and her mom needed to have this conversation sooner rather than later. “Mama, I took a look at the bills coming in this week-”

“Carino, it isn’t your job to worry about that.”

“Mom, please.” That made the woman stop, Luz only ever called her ‘mom’ if it was serious and they both knew that this was. The girl took her seat back in front of her mom. “One of the debt collectors increased the payments and he’s going to take legal action if we can’t make them. Utilities are also due, we can’t push those payments back any more or things are going to get shut off.” Luz squeezed the bridge of her nose. Her mom was trying to hide the look of defeat in her eyes. It wasn’t working. Luz took a breath and put her hand back down, squeezing it around the other on the table. “Mama, I ran the numbers, even with the cutbacks I wrote into the groceries we’re going to be about fifty dollars short.”

Her mother sniffled and seemed to be focusing on some point over Luz’s shoulder. She didn’t say anything.

Luz squeezed her hands tighter and straightened her back. “I… I recommend we pay electric and leave the water bill. It’s cheaper so it’ll be easier to pay at the end of next week. You can shower at work and I can shower at school and fill up water jugs to take home and-” She was suddenly cut off as her mom reached over and wrapped her in a tight hug. 

The woman was shuddering, trying so hard not to let her daughter know she was crying. “Lo siento.” Her voice was shaking. “Lo siento mucho, Luz. I… I…” 

“Mom… Mama, It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay.” They were holding onto each other so hard. “We’ve been through things like this before. We’re going to get through this. Okay?”

It felt like they were holding onto each other for an eternity. Her mom was the first to pull away. She then used the pad of her thumb to rub a soothing circle onto her daughter’s cheek. “Let’s go to bed Carino,” she offered a small smile. “It’s late and we both have work in the morning.”

Luz nodded silently and released her mother. They brushed their teeth together while filling the bathtub with water so that they’d have something for emergencies when it got shut off at some point the next day. 

“Buenas noches mija.”

“Buenas noches Mamá. Te quiero.”

Luz shut the door and waited until she heard her mother’s door close as well. Then, with a quivering lip, she brought a hand up to her side and pressed in. She could feel her ribs through her sweatshirt. Tears spilled down her cheeks but she bit her lip to keep any noises from leaking out. The sweatshirt helped hide how thin she was visually, but there was no way that, after that hug, her mom didn’t notice the fact that she was more skin and bones than person at this point. 

Luz tried to swallow the lump in her throat. At that moment she really wanted nothing more than to curl up on her bed and cry but she couldn’t. She had to get some rest. She had work in the morning.

And besides, sleep usually made the hunger pains go away for a bit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was actually really hard for me to think through before I actually started writing it, I knew that there were a few points that I had to hit but I had no idea how I was going to piece them together until I just kind of sat down and started typing. If the next chapter isn't already up it's because you're a freakishly fast reader and I'm still writing the end note for the next one. Anyway, hope you enjoyed, and I'll see you guys in a couple minutes!


	10. An Explanation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's that chapter I promised you! Hopefully you didn't need to wait.

Luz’s POV

Luz stared hard at the device in her hand. A classic video game system, the kind you’d hook up to your TV using the three different colored plugs. It looked like someone had run it through a car wash.

“This is the original system, not a remake. Could be worth a few hundred if I refurbish it well enough.” Luz turned her computer screen around to show Eda the page she found. 

“Hey Luz…”

“I know what you’re thinking and yes, some of the consoles on the site are worth more but those are mint condition and this will just be a refurbishment.”

“Luz…”

“I’ll need to start by taking it apart and seeing the internal damage but I have a feeling the only hard to find part is gonna be-”

“Luz!”

Luz dropped her screwdriver and looked up at Eda in shock. The woman was peering down at her like she’d grown a second head. King was perched in front of her on the opposite side of the table, giving Luz a similar look. “Do I… do I have something on my face?” Luz asked sheepishly, rubbing her fingers over her eyes. She’d been having trouble focusing her vision lately, that usually started happening when she went too long with poor sleep.

“Kid…” Luz blinked up at Eda, finally able to decipher that her expression was different than she’d initially thought. “What’s going on with you? You don’t look right.” Concern. That was the expression.

Trying to swallow the lump in her throat, Luz opened her mouth to speak but the sudden stop had made her lose all momentum. It felt like she was trying to spit up dust. She coughed to clear her throat but it wasn’t working. It was Sunday, they’d shut off the water yesterday. She’d already filled up a water bottle here three times, it sat half empty in front of her but she didn’t reach for it now. Slowly, she brought one of her hands into her lap and squeezed it to try to relieve the tension while she tried to force some words out of her mouth to no avail.

“Luz, hey.” Eda’s voice was calm. It sounded strange to come from a woman who usually had a much more energetic attitude. As though she were approaching a wild animal, Eda gently took the gaming console from Luz’s hand and placed it down on the table before taking the seat next to Luz. The girl felt as though she were frozen in place. “Okay, look. I haven’t said anything before because I figured it wasn’t my business, but something’s off. It’s been off for a while but it’s been getting worse.”

Luz blinked, breaking out of her trance enough to rapidly shake her head. “I- I’m fine.”

“Stop.” Eda held up her hand and Luz was back to staring at her face, trying to figure out what she had to say so that she could go back to work. “Luz, you look like you haven’t slept in weeks, you can’t do makeup well enough to hide the bruises, and despite the fact that you consume a rather large portion of my yogurt cups you still look like a damn twig.” There was a moment's hesitation before Eda placed her hand on Luz’s shoulder, she could practically feel her collar bone digging into the woman’s hand. “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s happening.”

Tears started to well up in Luz’s eyes. Her lip was quivering. She didn’t want to cry, she never cried in front of others. Crying was for people who weren’t supposed to be the ones that other people go to for comfort. She didn’t cry when Boscha kicked the chair out from under her in the lunchroom. She didn’t cry when the girls from her last school wrote homophobic slurs over her locker in permanant marker after she’d came out to them as bi. She didn’t cry ten years ago when she’d sat in the principal’s office for the first time in her life and listened to a grown woman call her every racial slur in the book while the secretary tried to call her mom for the fifth time that night, even though Luz had already told them that she wouldn’t pick up because her mom was an ER nurse and there was probably an emergency.

No. She didn't cry then. She wasn’t going to cry-

There was something around her. Something warm and calming. Eda was hugging her.

Luz didn’t do it intentionally but she just didn’t really have control over her body any more. Her arms reached up and hugged the woman back. A staggering breath stabbed its way into her lungs as she broke. Tears spilled down her cheeks like a waterfall and onto the shoulder of Eda’s dress. There was no whining or blubbering, just wheezing breath after wheezing breath while the hand on her back kept her anchored to the world around her.

They sat like that for a very long time. Long enough for King to weasel his way into the space between them on their laps without them really noticing. After an eternity of silence and calming touches, Luz finally felt her breathing steady and Eda pulled away just far enough to look her in the eye. “You okay?”

Luz nodded.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

She hesitated a second, then nodded again.

Eda gave Luz’s shoulder a squeeze and got up from her chair. Luz watched as the older woman prepared two mugs of warm apple cider, one of which may or may not have been spiked just a little bit, and placed the other one down in front of Luz.

The girl wrapped her hands around the warm mug and was grateful for the sensation. “I need more hours.” The words came out of Luz’s mouth like a croak.

Eda sighed, “Okay. Look, kid, as I said before, you look like you’re sick, why on Earth are you asking for more hours right now? If you tell me what’s actually going on, maybe I can actually help you. Please, you’re practically dead on your feet here.”

Luz looked down at the mug in her hands and tentatively took a sip. This was gonna be hard. “Did you know my dad was an insurance agent?” She didn’t look up but could feel Eda looking at her. “He was a good one too. He worked long hours and got promotions while my mom finished her nursing degree and eventually got a job at a really good hospital. They built their lives together from the ground up and when they found out they were pregnant with me it was like they’d won the lottery.” Luz chuckled, she could feel tears prickling at her eyes again and let them fall but let that be the end of it.

“Then… my dad got sick.” She sniffled, “Started treatment immediately but the insurance company that he worked for… they claimed that the treatment was experimental and wouldn’t pay for it. My mom sold everything, took out every loan she could, emptied their bank account, but it didn't matter. By the time I was born he couldn’t even hold me in his arms. There aren’t any pictures of us together.”   
Another deep breath, keep it together. “Now, we’re just stuck. My mom’s been working to dig us out of this hole for as long as I can remember. I started picking up odd jobs by the time I was twelve to help out, but the debt kept growing and it’s been all we can do just to keep our head above the water. I know that she loves me more than anything, that she’s doing the best she can and that she feels horrible that I have to deal with this too, but-” she hiccups. Her knuckles were turning white against the mug. “Eda, I don’t know what to do. I haven’t been eating, I barely sleep because the only time I get to see my mom is at three in the morning, and school is full of nothing but jerks that i can’t do anything about because nothing would ever happen except my mom needing to leave work early for the day.”

Eda nodded her head slowly, making sure that Luz was done speaking before reaching over and scratching behind King’s ears as the animal had been snuggled into Luz’s lap for the entirety of the rant. She was actually very grateful for him being there so that she had something to hold on to. “Well kid, I can’t say that I can help you with all of that. Believe me I wish I could, but there’s a reason I haven’t gotten around to fixing the hole that’s underneath the picture frame next to Hooty.”

As if to prove a point the clock started screeching from the other room. It was nowhere near the hour. 

“Oh shut up ya stupid bird!” Eda screamed back at it and Luz couldn’t help but let out a chuckle though it may have sounded more like a croak. Eda smiled slightly when she noticed the girl’s laugh. “But... I can say that I’ve been fair to you in terms of an hourly wage and with the commissions that you make, and I’m going to keep being fair about it. And as for some of that other stuff,” she jabbed her thumb over shoulder, “fridge has food-”

“Eda, I can’t do that-”

“Real food, not just yogurt, and you’re not just taking it or anything. I’m going to actually start getting groceries so that you can make something. See I’m a crap cook who’s been living off of frozen pizza for about two months now. I’m pretty sure you’ve mentioned that you cook before so if you cook and eat with me here around dinner time, you can take whatever’s left home with you.”

Luz sat there, staring at Eda, not really sure what to say.

“Oh, one more thing.” Eda finally released Luz’s shoulder and got up from her chair. She took two steps to the side and started rifling through one of the several junk drawers in the kitchen. After a few seconds, she pulled something out and placed it in Luz’s hand. “That’s a key to the shop. I’m trusting you with it.”

“Eda-”

“If anything happens, you can come in at any time. I leave the staff door unlocked so you can just come right up to the apartment if you need anything.”

Luz was frozen, her eyes glued to the key in her hand. She couldn’t accept this. Could she? She started shaking again. 

“Kid, I just want you to be safe okay? I might not show it in the traditional way but I do care about you and I care if you’re okay.”

A sniffle came from Luz. She used the heel of her hand to wipe at some of the dried tears as she nodded slowly. “Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I tried to make it as clear as possible in the last chapter that Luz and her mother loved each other more than anything and that Luz's mom was very torn up with the fact that her daughter was in this situation at all, but just in case I made sure to add in a few lines to make sure that there was no doubt. I also wanted to add in an explanation for why they were in the situation in the first place and it was initially going to be a conversation between Luz and Amity but looking at how their relationship is progressing, they're not quite there yet and that's okay. 
> 
> Anyway, I should be able to keep a more consistent updating schedule now that I'm done with finals (got a 95 on that Shakespeare essay btw), so look forward to that! 
> 
> As always, I hope you guys enjoyed, if you have any questions or thoughts, I read every comment and appreciate every single one (to Erritigue1, congratulations on the 2.5 million words in 5 days and thank you for enjoying my story, your comments made so happy when I read them!). Anyway, the next chapter is gonna be a bit lighter in subject matter so I'll see you then!


	11. The Problem With Throwing Your Headset Against A Wall

Amity’s POV

“What am I supposed to do about this?” Amity groaned and planted her forehead against the cool wood of one of the library’s study tables.

There was a snort from above her and Amity turned her head just enough to see Willow’s caring yet amused smile from the chair across from her. They had a few minutes before first period started and Amity had sent Gus and Willow a message last night asking them to meet her in the library so that they could talk in person without anyone else hearing. “Maybe you should try talking to her.” Willow suggested.

Gus nodded enthusiastically from his seat next to Willow. “Yeah, I mean, it’s clear that you guys are good together, and besides, it’s kind of obvious that you have a crush on her.” He mumbled the last part but that in no way stopped Amity from hearing.

“What?!” Amity shouted, then immediately quieted her voice when she remembered that they were in a library. “I mean, what do you mean it’s obvious?”

“Amity,” Willow’s smile widened with the knowing look in her eyes. “You always make an effort to stay on later than us so you can be alone with her.”

“Your voice gets all flustered when she says something nice to you.”

“And even though she can’t see it through the computer screen, you’re literally bright red right now.”

Amity felt her face heat up even more as she struggled to think of a way to respond to that. Was there a possibility that Lazura already knew? “Okay, but even then. I don’t even know what she’s really like. I’ve never met her in person, hell, I’ve never even seen her!” Amity felt herself clam up as a sudden realization struck her. “What if she isn’t who she says she is at all? What if she’s actually a middle aged man or something?” She felt panic swell in her chest and ran her fingers through her hair, messing up her ponytail as she groaned in distress.

“Amity, hey, look at me.” Willow’s voice was calm, how could she be so calm at a time like this? “Look, we’ve never met Lazura either, and I know that there are creepy people on the internet but I feel like if she had been one of those guys she probably would have asked for inappropriate pictures or an address years ago.”

“Okay, then why won’t she talk about her personal life, like, ever? I mean, I’m not exactly an open book on there, but I’ve told her about why I joined the game, the pressure my family puts me under and that I’m grateful for something to focus on that isn’t school. I’ve never heard her talk about anything like that though. Except for the occasional comment about how much she hates school in general anyway.”

Willow was quiet for a moment, her smile had been replaced with a contemplative look. It made Amity feel even more nervous. “Have I ever told you about how Lazura and I met?”

Amity blinked, then shook her head. She’d assumed that they’d just met in the game.

“It was a few years ago, before I’d really gotten close with Gus. I was going through a lot and didn’t really have anyone to talk to so I started going on a few different chat rooms online.” She hesitated, “One of them was kind of a support group for kids who were being bullied.”

Amity made a face, “Look, I am sorry about what Boscha did back then-”

“I wasn’t there because of Boscha.”

Amity averted her gaze. “Oh.” Her voice was soft, the shame obvious.

Willow, pierced her lips slightly, “Amity, you’ve apologised since then and I’ve forgiven you; but i’m not going to lie, it was one of the hardest times I’ve ever had to deal with.”

Gus placed a hand on Willow’s shoulder, but stayed silent.

“Anyway,” Willow continued. “Lazura was getting bullied a lot at her school too. The chat room was a good place to vent and she and I started talking outside of it too. Then some jerk found it and used the information he got to send some pretty personal emails and other things to everyone involved. Thankfully, Lazura and I were smart and used non identifying usernames and emails but apparently someone lost a scholarship because the troll found out where the kid had applied to school and sent a bunch of fake letters. Another kid got kicked out of home because he was outed to his parents.” There was a pause as Willow allowed Amity to absorb the information. 

Amity had never explicitly told Willow or Gus that she was gay but she had just spent the last ten minutes asking for their advice on how to deal with her crush who was female. She could imagine that it wasn’t difficult for Willow to understand why coming out was not an option for Amity considering the kind of views that her parents had.

Since Amity didn’t respond, Willow continued. “After that, the chat room got shut down but Lazura and I still talked, it was less explicit though. I mean, we’d never given real names or anything, but… those emails we got were pretty cruel, neither of us wanted to risk something like that happening again. She introduced me to The Boiling Isles and we just kind of reached a silent agreement that we wouldn’t talk about our personal lives anymore. Obviously she was still there for me if I needed to get something off of my chest and vice versa; but online kind of just became the place where we go to escape from everything.”

Amity felt horrible. She felt horrible for what she’d done to Willow and what had happened to her afterward. She also wondered, now that she knew a bit more about Lazura’s history, what the other girl’s reaction would be to finding out that she had been the reason that Willow had been in the same chat room as her. Lazura was so sweet and funny, she deserved better than some old bully who wouldn’t even stop Boscha from picking on others unless it benefitted her. “Willow, I am really sorry, for how I treated you, then, how I let Boscha treat you-”

The bell rang, and amity twitched at the sudden noise then looked back at Willow. This wasn’t the kind of conversation where she was supposed to have the last word.

To her surprise, Willow didn’t look pissed off or anything. She was actually smiling again, that small, calm smile that made Amity feel reassured. “Talk to Lazura.” Willow said as she started to gather her things. “Tell her how you feel, maybe even ask her to meet you in person. If you feel like you might need backup, Gus and I can come along too.”

Gus nodded again. “Yeah! We’ve got your back Witchling.” He whispered her username with a wink. “That’s what friends are for!”

Amity smiled widely on her way to pre calc. She tried several times to tap out the message on the discord app on her phone, deleting words and the whole thing a few times before she hoped she had the perfect message. Taking a deep breath, she hit send before she felt something heavy push her and she suddenly ended up on the floor.

“Oh jeez, I’m so sorry!”

Amity looked up to see Luz, also on the ground next to her, trying frantically to pick up a pile of loose papers and textbooks that she’d dropped in the collision. Amity sighed and picked her phone up off of the ground, relieved to see that it wasn’t damaged by the fall. She debated chastising the girl for being so unorganized but at this point she knew that that was just how Luz was. “You’re late too huh? Traffic in the bike lane?”

Luz looked up at her a little startled. She blinked as if she were trying to process information. “Was… was that a joke?”

Amity offered a slight nod. Luz stared at her for a second as though she were a deer in headlights. She supposed she couldn’t really blame the girl for being at least a little surprised, while Amity had warmed up to her a bit over the last two study sessions she hadn’t made a joke yet. In fact, she couldn’t really remember the last time she’d made a joke outside of a virtual world.

As Luz finished picking up her papers Amity noticed something off about the girl and it took her a second to put her finger on it. “Hey, are you okay?” Luz seemed to be strung a lot tighter than usual. While she was usually emotionally distant to say the least, now she was practically twitching. She didn’t even look at Amity while she moved, just stared intently as though solving a math problem without anything actually being in front of her. Considering she normally stared boredly into space, this could definitely be considered out of the ordinary.

“Huh?” Luz’s eyes snapped up to hers for only a second before her gaze shifted away like a guilty puppy that had made a mess. “Oh, I’m fine. We should probably just get to class.” She was talking very quickly, with the intent of someone whose mind was elsewhere and just wanted the conversation to be over with. As Luz walked off towards the precalculus class that they were both quite a bit late for, Amity noticed something else unusual about her. Her hair was wet, and Amity might have been imagining things but it looked like there were soap bubbles in it.

Luz’s POV

“What are you making? It smells good?” 

Luz glanced over her shoulder at Amity who was doing that night’s homework at Eda’s kitchen table while Luz cooked. “Patatas bravas,” Luz answered. “Spicy potatoes. Your brother and sister will probably pick you up before dinner time but you can probably have a taste once they’re done frying.”

Amity gave a curious look at the pan in front of Luz before turning back to her work. They’d gotten their quizzes from last Friday back yesterday after getting to class late. Luz had gotten her usual perfect score and Amity had gotten a 98 by using one of the methods that Luz had taught her to check her work and was able to find an error. Of course, before Mr. Bump had handed them back their papers; he'd given them both an earful about being late. Luz wasn’t sure why little miss perfect hadn’t been able to get to class on time, but for herself Luz simply hadn’t realized how long it would take her to shower and the warning bell had sounded off before she was able to finish rinsing off completely. 

Of course, she was nothing if not able to learn from her mistakes so she left her house even earlier that morning and was able to make it through the classroom door right as the bell rang. Despite that though, she was still pretty tense after the last few days. She hadn’t really been online over the weekend since her conversation with her mother Friday night, or Saturday morning depending on how you looked at it. Though her mom wasn’t really around to tell her what to do, she’d suggested Luz try to catch up on sleep a bit over the weekend and she hadn’t been able to say no. Then yesterday, Witchling had sent her a message saying that she wanted to talk about something but then had some technical difficulties and couldn’t hear anything, nor could Luz hear her. She’d obviously been having problems with her headset from the beginning as made clear by the horrible sound quality that was obviously the result of old and overused technology. Witchling had felt that it was better to actually go into a voice chat for what she wanted to talk about rather than just messaging back and forth, and since Luz didn’t have a phone to call, they would need to wait before talking.

Luz had actually offered to take a look at the malfunctioning equipment but Witchling had said that she knew someone already who might help so they left it at that.

Several minutes passed in which Luz finished the dish and packaged it up for later, then took her usual seat next to Amity and pulled the latest project within reach. Amity asked the occasional question but this topic was a little easier to grasp so they mostly just worked in silence. Eventually, Amity closed her math notebook but instead of pulling another assignment out of her bag like she did during their last two sessions, she just sat, drumming her fingers lightly against the table.

“Hey, Luz? You fix things right?”

Luz paused in her work, just long enough to make eye contact with Amity before gesturing to the screwdriver in her hand.

“I know, stupid question, I’m sorry.” She sighed, “I just… I have something.” She reached into her backpack and pulled out a pair of really banged up headphones with a microphone attachment that was only held together by the wires. “These broke and I was hoping that you could fix them.”

Luz took the headset from Amity’s hands and turned them over. “What happened to them?”

Amity crossed her arms. “They weren’t in that great shape when my brother gave them to me, but the other day I kind of… ThReW tHeM aGaInSt ThE wAll.” She coughed the last part.

“I’m sorry, what did you do to them.”

Another sigh, “I threw them against a wall.”

Luz chuckled, “Wow, Blight, I didn’t take you for a rage quitter.”

Amity rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t like that. Can you fix them or not.”

Luz set the headphones down on the table. Sure she could fix them. It was all physical damage, some loose wires and a frame that could easily be snapped back into place. It wasn’t like it had been dunked in gatorade or anything, though she could fix that too with a little more effort. This probably wouldn’t even take her that long. 

She opened her mouth to say as much but hesitated. Even with Eda’s help with groceries she and her mom still wouldn’t have the money to turn the water back on that week…

“I’ll fix them for fifty dollars.” Luz felt bad, it was one thing for Eda to jack up the price of something and give her a cut but it was another for Luz to do it. Theoretically, it wouldn’t even need replacement parts so she’d be charging this for what would probably end up being less than two hours of labor. “This kind of headset is pretty old but any newer version you could find in good quality would probably cost around two hundred dollars.” At least that was the truth, they were old but the brand they were from was pretty expensive. 

Amity frowned at the price but ultimately nodded. “I’ll pay you on Thursday during our next session. Do you think you’ll be done with them by then?”

Luz nodded, “Yeah, that should be fine.”

A few minutes later, Amity’s siblings came to pick her up and Luz stuffed the headset into her backpack. Since this was a commission that wasn’t through The Owl House, Luz didn’t feel comfortable doing it there. Besides, she had two days to get it done. 

At around six o’clock, Eda came into the back room and placed a busted rotating fan down in front of Luz before prepping two plates with the food that Luz had prepared and that day’s bag of frozen vegetables that were about to expire.

“So, thought I’d let you know that I was gonna be chaperoning your school dance.” Eda piped up as she took her first bite. “Hey kid, this is really good.”

“Thanks,” Luz smiled softly, before it shifted into a confused look. “Wait, what school dance?”

“The winter formal, it’s not until December but chaperone slips were due last week and surprise, surprise, not a lot of parents want to spend a Saturday night watching a bunch of high schoolers flirt badly.” Eda, snorted. “So, my sister asked me to fill in for the night.”

“Your sister works for my school? Wait, you have a sister?”

Eda blinked. “Oh yeah, I guess I never told you.” She scratched the back of her neck, “Yeah, she and I have been kind of distant since she messed with a college application of mine but we’ve been… working on things.” The older woman shrugged, “I’m not sure if you have her as a teacher but if you see a Mrs. Clawthorn in the hall, say hi to her for me.”

“Vice Principal Clawthorn is your sister?!” Luz stared at Eda with wide eyes.

“Lily’s a vice principal?” Eda took a swig of apple cider. “I probably should have known that, huh?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Thank you all for the comments from the last update! I loved reading every single one of them. After the hardballs that were the last two chapters, hopefully this one is simple enough to calm some nerves. 
> 
> Anyway, as always I hope you enjoyed and I look forward to hearing what you have to think!


	12. A Good Day

Luz’s POV

Luz was humming to herself as she set her bike up in the garage. It had been a good day for her. Boscha hadn’t bothered her, the patatas bravas she’d cooked at Eda’s would definitely be enough for her and her mom later and maybe even for a little breakfast for herself tomorrow, and thanks to Amity she should be able to get the water back on by the end of the week. She was feeling good.

On the other hand, not needing to cook while doing homework was something that she definitely wasn’t used to. It took about five minutes of sitting at her desk with her history textbook in front of her for her to understand that it wasn’t going to work. She kept zoning out and it just felt like she was being completely unproductive. After a few more minutes of staring at her textbook, she sighed and got out her laptop. There was something that she’d been working on for a while that she could maybe have running in the background.

One cool thing that Luz had discovered a while back was programming. It had started with her calculator, back in middle school when they had started learning the more advanced equations for mathematics Luz had quickly realized the redundancy of having to type in the same long list of numbers and symbols over and over again. Don’t get her wrong, she could remember every one of them but typing out the quadratic formula every single time it came up was time consuming especially if there was a mistake. However, it took her about five minutes of youtube crawling to find a solution in the form of programing her calculator to do all that crap for her while she only needed to input the variables. 

Of course Luz could still do everything the old fashioned way if it came down to it, but it saved a lot of time on homework and tests that she was allowed to have a calculator in. Then, after a very long internet rabbit hole, it eventually sent her down the path of game development that she was still on now.

One of the less efficient but less dangerous ways of gaining gold in The Boiling Isles was to go mining in some of the designated areas. It was dull and repetitive, mainly just dragging the mouse over to glowing spots of light and clicking, but it was something that could keep young children occupied while their parents were busy so there was that. Luz pulled the game up and then opened up the coding and input a sequence that was designated to her computer. Then, with the press of an enter key, her avatar started banging away at the wall while slowly but surely, the amount of gold in her inventory increased. 

Luz smiled, content with the program she’d spent a good length of time developing last summer. A lot of bots got caught and kicked off pretty quickly but she’d done her research and was careful, she’d added a slight time delay to the mouse and even programmed in a random ‘miss’ every once and awhile just to make sure she didn’t send up any red flags. She knew that the main developers were actually pretty okay with mods and things like that as long as they were done on private servers instead of the main game. Some of the cool weapons and spells that people have come up with on their own had even made their way into the main game and that was actually how the artificer subclass had started out.

Luz had worked on some stuff like that in the past but it was nowhere near as polished as some of the things she’d seen on youtube, and of course she wouldn’t bring any of those into the main game. It was one thing to create a fireball gun in the privacy of your own server but bringing that thing into the main game was cause for getting banned. Technically, the mining was illegal too but that would probably get more of a slap on the wrist than anything else, it wasn’t like she’d programmed her character to beat other players in PvP settings; though it had been done and if she gave it an honest try, Luz could probably do it too.

With the soft tinkling of gold being added to her inventory in the background, Luz went back to her homework. It was suddenly a lot easier since she could finally focus instead of zoning out. History was boring, english made her hate Shakespeare, math took all of two seconds, and with nothing else to do with her life, she pulled Amity’s headphones out of her backpack and started troubleshooting them. She had two days but why not get started right?

Amity’s POV

Amity sat in her computer chair, clutching a pillow to her chest. She could see that Lazura was online but wasn’t sure if she should go on as well. With a sigh, she set her head down against her desk. This was so much easier before she had a crush.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who's back!
> 
> It's kind of funny, I started doing this for the same reason that Amity started playing online, to relieve some stress during classes. About partway through winter break I took a little time off from writing to spend with my family while doing volunteer work (we were careful regarding quarantine, don't worry). Anyway, this story has always been in the back of my mind (and it will be finished regardless of breaks) and naturally instead of studying for my first biochemistry exam of the semester, I wrote four chapters. ._.
> 
> I know that this chapter was a bit short but it is a promise of things to come so, as always, I hope you enjoyed!


	13. A Much Less Than Good Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for bullying and some blood.
> 
> Thank you for all of your comments with the last chapter. I hope you enjoy this one just as much!

Amity’s POV

Amity was practically shaking with anticipation as she walked through the front doors of the school. Even Edric and Emira’s usual horrible variations of the priest-walks-into-a-bar joke couldn’t deter her this morning.

It was Thursday, she was getting her headphones back today. She was going to do a voice call with Lazura today. She was going to ask her what her real name is and see if they could meet in person, or do a video chat over discord, or… something. Anything. Literally anything would be enough for her. 

Amity’s face was heating up again. She hoped Luz did a good job with her headphones because she’d been listening to Lazura’s voice for so long while barely being able to actually hear it. She wanted to hear that laugh that has been crackling in her headphones as though through a plastic bag. She wanted to hear the softness in her voice as she points out where the fallen robin’s nest is in a woodland mission and where to put it back so that the momma robin gives you a worm as a reward. Amity still has that word in her inventory. It has no magical properties and according to Lazura it would actually give your avatar some poison damage if you were to eat it, but when she looks at the worm sitting in the ninth box of her hotbar she remembers how Lazura had given it to her as a gift. It was dorky and cute and sweet and, well, it was Lazura.

After taking a few deep breaths to get refocused, Amity walked into the classroom for her first period. There was still a bit of time before the class started so she expected it to be empty but was surprised to find Luz sleeping with her head down on the desk. The neck of her hoodie was a little wet and as Amity got closer she noticed that Luz’s hair was wet again and a small puddle was forming on the desk. It had been sunny out this morning so Amity wasn’t really sure how this seemed to keep happening but she hoped that Luz wouldn’t catch a cold from it.

Amity sat down at her desk and debated waking Luz up. She was supposed to give her back her headphones during their study session after school so she probably had them on her now. She didn’t have a lot of spending money since her parents wouldn’t let her get a job and she had to ask for anything she needed, but thankfully she had barely enough hidden away under her bed from birthday cards throughout the years from aunts and uncles who couldn’t spell her name right and grandparents who didn't care enough to learn it at all.

She’d seen how thorough Luz was while working, she’d worked on things that were much more damaged than her headphones had been and gotten them back to perfect working order but she had a lot riding on getting those headphones back tonight. Logically she knew that Lazura would understand if she had to delay again, but subconsciously she didn’t want the kind of conversation she wanted to have precursed by Amity being unreliable. 

As Amity’s thoughts circulated, Luz let out a little breath through her nose before readjusting her face in her arms. Amity smiled a little at the other girl before pulling out a book. Luz had said she’d be done with them by now, so Amity had to trust that that was the case. Whether she got her headphones now or in a few hours wouldn’t change anything.

A few other students filed in early and when the final bell rang, Luz lifted her head up for just long enough to answer ‘here’ for attendance before laying back down. Mr. Bump gave her a look but moved on. Amity’s grade has been improving and she was actually feeling confident about the quiz tomorrow so Luz had held up her end of the bargain for those participation points. On the other hand, Boscha, as usual, was taking the opportunity to get spit balls into Luz’s hair. 

For the duration of the class Amity tried to just ignore Boscha and keep her eyes on her notes but the snickering from the red head was making it difficult to concentrate. She glanced over at Luz who was still asleep but her expression grimaced every now and then when a stray spitball stuck to the back of her neck or found its way under the collar of her shirt. Amity pursed her lips, Luz didn’t deserve this. 

The next time Mr. Bump turned around and Boscha made a move to launch another spitball, Amity leaned over to Boscha and whispered, “Hey, knock it off alright. I’m trying to focus.” It was an excuse, she knew that if she wasn’t careful Boscha would sense that something was off with her and would pester her until something slipped. She and Boscha hadn’t had much opportunity to hang out after Amity quit soccer but she’d had her reasons for that, the same reasons she was using at that moment. In the words of her mother: education comes first and if something is distracting it is to be nipped in the bud.

Amity returned to her notes as Boscha shot her an annoyed look. “It never distracted you before.” She whispered.

There was no further explanation for Amity to offer so she drew from the experience of a normal dinner with her mother. Expression blank, focus on the task at hand and not on Boscha. This meant the end of the conversation and thankfully Boscha was bright enough to figure that out.

With an annoyed snort, Boscha stuffed the straw into her pocket and popped a stick of gum in her mouth as Mr. Bump continued with the review for tomorrow’s quiz.

After a few moments, Willow glanced back at Amity and offered a discrete smile and Amity had to admit that she felt a little proud of herself too. It was small, just a few words with no possible repercussions but still, it felt good to be doing better, to try being a better person. No. She was going to be a better person. It’s what Willow deserved, what Luz deserved, what Lazura des-

Amity’s thoughts were cut off as the bell at the end of the period rang and Luz started to lift her head up only for Boscha’s hand to slam it back down against the desk. Amity froze, she was the only one that saw it and she was the only one watching as Boscha slyly slid her hand down from the back of Luz’s neck until it was gripping the shoulder of her hoody. Luz’s breaths came in inconsistent shudders and she didn’t try to lift her head up again. “Sorry,” Boscha muttered in Luz’s ear, a false hint of coyness in her voice. “My foot slipped.”

Boscha’s grip on Luz’s shoulder tightened momentarily, causing both Luz and Amity to wince, before letting go and strutting out of the room.

The room was starting to clear out. Amity was drawing out the time by placing her binder in her bag as slowly as possible as she watched Luz out of the corner of her eye. The girl’s knuckles were white as she gripped the edge of her desk. Amity could see the muscles in her arms trembling beneath her thick hoodie. An audible hiss came from Luz’s lips as she slowly raised her head and Amity’s face blanched at the sight. 

Luz’s hand shook as she reached up and touched her lip, then pulled away to view the same red colored liquid that was already dripping down her chin and mixing with the puddle of water on her desk. Not even a glance was spared in Amity’s direction as Luz pressed the cuff of her hoodie to her mouth, flinching at the contact, while she used her other sleeve to wipe the desk off. 

Amity was still in too much shock to even move until Luz was out the door of the classroom. She wished she hadn’t been though, because then she would have been able to warn Luz about the wad of fresh, pink, bubble gum that had been firmly pressed into the hair on the back of her head where Bosha’s hand had been.

Luz’s POV

“Hey Luz, can I come in?”

Luz paused, removing her head from under the warm water of Eda’s bathroom sink, where she had been for last half hour trying to get the stupid gum out of her hair to no avail. Instead of responding to the voice at the door, Luz just looked at herself in the mirror. The split lip had scabbed over from that morning, really all it was was that her old split lip had reopened worse, and the fresh bruise taking up nearly her entire cheek was turning from red to purple. How the hell was she supposed to hide this from her mom?

The door creaked open to reveal Amity looking hesitant, probably waiting for Luz to tell her to go away. When no such demand came, Amity slowly stepped into the bathroom and closed the door behind her, stopping abruptly as her eyes fell on Luz. There was a jar of peanut butter in her hand.

“What’s with that?” Luz asked, pushing herself up from the sink. It hurt to use her mouth but she hoped Amity couldn’t tell.

Amity blinked, then shook her head slightly as though to clear her thoughts. She raised the jar of peanut butter slightly higher in the air. “Uh, it’s for your hair, to get the gum out I mean. It took me a little while to find Eda’s pantry.” She shuddered slightly, “It was… not behind the door at the end of the hallway.”

Luz grimaced at the mention of the door. “Oh man… how much did you-”

“Too much.” Amity responded very quickly. “Anyway, yeah, this is good for getting gum out of hair so…” She held out the jar to Luz who took it hesitantly. 

Luz frowned at the jar. “This isn’t a prank is it?” She really didn’t have the energy to deal with any more today. Not that she ever had the energy, but still.

“Oh, Luz, god no!” Amity looked shocked by the question. “It really does work. Here, I can… show... you.” Amity looked like she was trying hard not to cringe at her own words.

Luz looked back down to the jar of peanut butter in her hand. What did she have left to lose after all? She handed it back to Amity and watched as the other girl unscrewed the lid and got a glob of it on her fingers.

“Umm, do you think you could sit down or something?”Amity asked and Luz remembered that she probably had a good four inches on her.

“Oh, yeah, sure.” Luz took a seat on the rim of the bathtub with her back facing Amity, her shoes were leaving scuffs of dirt on the tub’s white finish. She’d wash it out later.

Slowly Amity brought her fingers up to the gum in her hair and started covering it with peanut butter. Amity’s other hand was on her shoulder, helping to stabilize her head and Luz suddenly became acutely aware of the fact that she wasn’t wearing her hoodie. She’d taken it off so as not to get it too wet while trying to wash her hair and now Amity was touching her shoulder. Yes, she had a T-shirt on and the food that Eda had been providing for the last few days made it so that she no longer looked like a complete skeleton, but still. Someone was touching her without a sweatshirt on. Touching her shoulder and her head. Luz was suddenly holding her breath and squeezing her eyes shut, waiting to be thrown against the floor or thrust into a headlock. 

Then, just like that, the hands were gone. “Luz, are you okay?”

Luz released her breath and looked back over her shoulder at Amity who was looking at her with concern. She’d taken a step back, giving Luz space. Slowly Luz nodded and turned back around. She was okay, Amity wasn’t going to do anything, it was okay. “Yeah, I’m good.” Her voice was soft and this time when Amity touched her hair, she didn’t stiffen. After a few moments Luz found that she was actually able to relax a little bit. Amity was being gentle and it felt kind of… nice actually.

Amity spent the next few minutes properly covering the gum and surrounding hair on Luz’s head, then they let it sit for a few minutes. When Amity finally tugged on the mesh of foodstuffs, a glob of bubble gum and peanut butter plopped onto the floor of the tub. 

“Holy crap, Amity.” Luz said, running her own hand through her hair picking out whatever was left of the gum before going over to the sink and rinsing everything out. The last time someone had stuck gum in her hair was the reason that she had short hair in the first place and she was starting to worry that she’d have to shave the back. “How the hell did you know that would work?”

Amity smiled softly, screwing the lid of the jar shut. “My older siblings used to do this kind of thing all the time when I was younger. I picked up a few tricks.” Luz nodded and was about to say something when Amity cut her off. “Luz, I’m sorry. About the gum.”

Luz looked down at her confused, “What do you mean? It was Boscha, wasn’t it?”

“I mean, yes, it was, but…” She rubbed the back of her neck. “I told her to stop blowing spit balls at you and she decided to escalate things like she always does and I should have known better and I- I’m sorry Luz.” 

Luz shook her head. “It isn’t your fault Bosha’s a terrible person.” She threw her hoodie back over her head and stepped out of the bathroom, holding the door open for Amity. They started walking back down to the work space in Eda’s kitchen. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry your siblings are so terrible.”

Amity chuckled at that. “They’re actually a lot better now that our parents don’t make us spend every waking moment with each other anymore. I swear, the second we realized we could stay in our own rooms it was like a switch flipped.” Suddenly Amity started laughing a bit harder and shook her head.

“What is it?” Luz asked, a confused smile on her face as Amity shook her head.

“It’s nothing, just a bad joke one of them told me on the way to school.”

Luz immediately placed her chin on her fist, mockingly giving Amity her full attention. “Well now you have to tell me!” 

“It’s like, really bad.” Amity’s words of warning did nothing to deter Luz as she held her position, gazing up at Amity expectantly. An exasperated sigh escaped her mouth. “So… A priest, a monk and a rabbit walk into a blood drive. The guy running it walks over and asks them what their blood type is. The rabbit looks a little confused and says ‘I think I’m a typo”. Amity pursed her lips in a small smile as she watched Luz expectantly.

It probably took a solid second for it to click before Luz closed her eyes and started chuckling which quickly turned into a laugh loud enough to wake up Eda on a bad day. When Luz opened her eyes again, Amity was looking at her with a wide smile on her face, though there was a second where it looked like she was thinking about something but whatever it was could apparently be easily dismissed as she started laughing along with Luz.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more time, I just want to thank you all for your support for last weeks chapter. It meant a lot to me that you enjoy my story so much and I hope that you continue to read and enjoy!

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to comment below, I'd love to hear what you have to say! I hope you guys enjoyed this first chapter and I'll try to get the next one up soon!


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